Tag: Bogshed

Lancaster Venues 32 to 34

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.

Heptonstall Festival

The town of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire dates back to the Saxon (not the band!) era and sheep rearing was the main occupation at that stage. When the industrial revolution commenced, there was an increasing need for water-powered weaving mills and the villages proximity to the river presented a considerable advantage. The transportation element was further enhanced with the opening of the Rochdale Canal in 1798 and the Calder Valley rail line in 1841.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s many artists, musicians and bohemians gravitated towards the town thereby increasing the tourism and reliable train links were created into the big cities of Manchester and Leeds. The town obtained fairtrade status in 2003 and was also chosen to be part of the Stage 2 route in the 2014 Tour de France.

On the cultural front the original video of Dream Academy’s 1984 single ‘Life in a Northern Town’ was filmed in the town as was the hugely successful TV series Happy Valley.  A renowned Blues Festival was held there in the early 2010’s and there is also the nationally renowned Trades Club where regular gigs are held, though I have never yet visited as tickets are regularly at a premium.

Dream Academy promo. Image Credit iheart.com

Luminaries such as Patti Smith, Teenage Fanclub, Public Service Broadcasting, Loop and Mark Lanegan have graced the stage there. Peel faves Bogshed were from the town, and I still recall their very lo-fi out there ‘hit’ single ‘Fat Boy Exam Failure’, and I also saw them at Preston Caribbean Club back in 1985.

Above the town lies the hilltop village of Heptonstall where the poet Sylivia Plath is buried. It is a throwback to an archetypal Yorkshire village further embellished by the fact that in the 1980’s the roads were returned to their original stone setts and late 19th century cast-iron gas lamps were installed.

Bogshed. Image Credit pinterest.com

The original church was damaged by a gale in 1847 and now just a shell remains. However, one of the lads in 2015 picked up on a more contemporary usage of the church with the identification of the annual Heptonstall festival where John Bramwell and Lottery Winners have graced the stage there.  

Thus, on the 04/07/15 we sallied over on the train alighting at Hebden Bridge station and after a couple of beers in town we headed up on the bus to the village. When I say up, that is a significant understatement as it is a very steep climb, one I have only yet walked downwards, but hope to rectify that upward trajectory at some stage.

The two pubs in the village and accompanying food stalls were doing a roaring trade and it was a very well organised and q friendly set-up. On the Heptonstall Festival Acoustic Stage we saw a band called Revisit and the Three Valleys Gospel Choir, who perform locally on a regular basis, mainly in the Todmorden area.

Top of the Heptonstall hill. Image Credit screenyorkshire.co.uk

On the Heptonstall Festival Weavers Square I encountered some electro-pop from the Manchester musician Zoe Stirling who is also known under the alias KOHL. The Hebden based eight-piece Owter Zeds who have been on the scene for 30 years followed with their ska covers. Next up was Catfish Skillet who are classed in the hugely niche genre of Pennine Appalachian and incorporate some quick picking bluegrass banjo playing. The final band were a decent post-punk band from Liverpool called Takotsubo Men.

I returned a couple of years later to attend the 2017 edition and on the main stage witnessed local folk band Johnny Powell & The Seasonal Beasts and a jaunty acoustic set from MK and the Escalators. They had set up a further stage in the evocative setting of the remnants of Heptonstall Festival Church where a Scottish influenced folk combo called Outside the Box played some foot tapping tunes.