This week I am returning to the 2025 Lancaster Live Festival. The next place we arrived at was Lancaster Greens on North Road. It has had previous lives as a railway station, motor car showroom, Spavin and Kelly sports and toy store and more latterly the Green Ayre Wetherspoons hostelry. The Green Ayre opened in 2001 and was subsequently flooded by Storm Desmond in 2017.
In 2020 it was converted into its current function as a large sports bar and the owner Keiran McNamara expanded his empire by revamping the unit next door from former DW Sports into a 11-table pool hall. They apparently also have the infernal karaoke on their pub roster.
Greens. Image Credit lancs.live
On our visit there was a band called Mikey T’s Small Town Playboys playing in the centre area of the bar. They hail from the Fylde coast and are also informally known as the Galleonaires, this title deriving from their regular appearances at the renowned blues and funk establishment, the Galleon Bar in Blackpool. They also perform regularly around the local venues in Lytham and Cleveleys.
We then headed on towards the outermost location of the festival Lancaster Gregson Centre (previously Gregson Institute)which is a five minute walk down Moor Lane beyond Dukes cinema. My pal John Dewhurst inadvertently first discovered this venue when he was overnight parking his car prior to the lads Christmas night out one year.
The institute was founded in 1889 (coincidentally the year when my team Preston North End became the original Invincibles) as a memorial to Henry Gregson. The Gregson family were the co-founders of the Natural History Museum and are purported to have created the word ‘dinosaur’.
In the early 20th century, it had a church and then a school attached before being bought in 1984 by a charity that now go under the name of Gregson Community Association. It sailed very close to the bankruptcy window in 1990 and also during the covid period, but both times thankfully survived and is now open 11am to 11pm seven days a week.
The volunteers outside Gregson Centre. Image Credit gregson.co.uk
Some considerable fundraising has taken place serving to improve the building and its facilities. They also have several affiliated charity groups that have undertaken activities to restore previously disused local sites such as recreation grounds and gardens, and they also run a cricket club.
It is now a multi-functional arts and community venue and within their walls there is a café-bar, function room, music venue and a small cinema that is available for hire. I have always had thoughts of hiring the cinema for a small group and maybe showing something like the Mogwai soundtracked ‘Zidane’ but that still currently remains on my ‘to-do list’!
I had previously visited several times for drinks and once for a hearty roast dinner, but I have never seen live music there. However, an archive check informs that over the years they have had periodic gigs including John Peel faves Bogshed, John Etheridge, Dutch act Guns of Navarone and of course The Wedding Present.
On our visit we consumed a fine beer in the bar before attending the cinema room where the shows were taking place with the Saturday listing being badged as Queer Night, in comparison to the other two been referenced as Band and Jazz Fusion nights respectively. On stage were a local noisy punk two-piece called Murky Buckets who lived up to their byline by playing music that your grandma would describe as a ‘bloody racket’.
Murky Buckets. Image Credit facebook.com
Outside the plethora of venues that were directly listed in the festival programme, were a few additional fringe events. One such occurrence was at the Lancaster Reform Club on Great John Street. It was originally opened in 1873 and was modelled on the same named venue in Pall Mall in London. The latter establishment was devised on the back of the Great Reform Act in 1832 and was a haven for Radicals and Whigs of their time and evolved into the initial political headquarters of the Liberal Party.
The Lancaster version remains a grand old building, and they had named themselves the Craic Inn for the day and we saw a Scottish lass called Rhuari Campbell performing. I had seen her at a previous edition of the festival playing at Lancaster Storey Gardens.