Wiganers remember their Bickershaw Festival experience 50 years on

After Wigan Today last week featured a new commemorative book and DVDs last week about the huge event as it celebrates its golden anniversary, readers have been coming forward with recollections of their own.

The festival was held on the Bickershaw fields between Wigan and Leigh over the days of May, 5, 6 and 7 50 years ago and was set to be the north of England’s version of Woodstock.

The spectacular line-up included legends such as: The Grateful Dead, The Kinks, Donovan, Family Country Joe, Wishbone Ash, Cheech and Chong, Incredible String Band, Hawkwind, Captain Beyond, Stackridge, Captain Beefheart and Brinsley Schwartz.

However, rain poured over the three days onto the old mining land which transformed it into a mud-fest, seeing only half of the expected turnout and leaving organisers a total loss of around £60,000.

Several Wigan residents have been recalling it all:

David McClelllan said: “Me and a school friend cycled there on the Sunday morning.

“It had been raining all night so it was a mud bath.

“We managed to get in without paying, we just walked in without being challenged.

“Some of the audience were quite startling.

“A group of really scary-looking Hells Angels were the first people we saw, followed by a woman in a yellow leotard wading through the mud using a pair of broom handles with down-turned buckets as makeshift ski-poles!

“There were lots of stalls selling hippie-type merchandise.

“I remember seeing Brinsley Schwarz, Country Joe and the Fish, New Riders of the Purple Sage and finally, the Grateful Dead.

“Being only 15, I was on a curfew as it was a school night, so I had to leave at around 9pm just after Grateful Dead had got going.

“My other memory was being in my parents garden on the Friday evening in Lowton, and hearing Wishbone Ash as clearly as if they were on my record player!”

Julie Wood said: “I don't remember much.

"My auntie took me and my brother, we were nine and 11.

"All I remember was rain, mud and rubbish everywhere and lots of people dressed in hippy clothes!”

Malcolm S Ryding said: “I didn’t see any of the performances, I saw only the inside of Wigan County Magistrates’ Court, on Crawford Street, where all the festival’s illegal activity was punished.

"I was reporting on all the court cases.

“The only time I saw the festival on site was on the Friday afternoon when I wandered around the squelching fields.

"There, I bumped into one of my incognito drug officer friends and his girlfriend dressed up as hippies!”

Chris Hewitt was a 16-year-old student who worked on the festival and helped Jeremy Beadle – who would go on to be a major TV star – promote it.

He said: “Beadle contacted all the social secretaries at colleges around Lancashire to ask if anyone would like to help promote the festival and I was one of the people that got accepted.

“50 years later I am still in the business providing stage gear for music biopics including: Bohemian Rhapsody, Morrissey, Rocket Man and Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols TV Series.”