HOW THE  FOLK & BOAT FESTIVAL STARTED

by Dave Roberts – The Middlewich Diary

The Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival came into being following a discussion at the Boar’s Head in Middlewich in 1989. On their travels Rchard Devaney and Dave Thompson, members of the Middlewich Paddies, had seen festivals in places like Newcastleton, Bromsgrove and, closer to home, Nantwich and Chester.

They wondered if something similar might work here in Middlewich. A committee was formed with the purpose of staging the first Festival in 1990. Members of that pioneering committee were: Richard Devaney, Dave Thompson, Mike Parsons, Peter Cox, Colin Barrass, Sally Fallon, local bank manager Derek Clayton and, the driving force behind getting the start-up money in place,  John McAteer

Coincidentally, at exactly the same time, the Trent & Mersey Canal Society was thinking of staging a boat rally in the town, partly inspired by memories of the 1975 Inland Waterways Association Rally which was held in Middlewich, appropriately enough on the site of the old Seddon’s Pepper Street Salt Works, where ‘The Moorings’ now stand. 

The Festival’s organisers, seeking for a unique ‘angle’ to help in promoting their event, considered Middlewich’s long canal history to be the perfect answer; Folk music and canal boats. Thus the ‘Folk and Boat’ came into being on Friday 15^th June 1990, featuring The Paddies, Bernard Wrigley ‘The Bolton Bullfrog’, The Boat Band, Token Women and, as MC and purveyor of allegedly ‘funny’ poems, me. Actually, having been persuaded to go along to one of the early committee meetings on the strict understanding that I ‘wouldn’t be part of a committee’ I came away having agreed to be the Festival’s Publicity Officer. I knew nothing about publicity (or MCing for that matter) but I’ve always thought that you can do anything if you don’t know that you can’t do it!

People in Middlewich took the Festival to their hearts immediately, as did the visitors who ventured here to see what Middlewich had to offer.

The atmosphere at that first Festival was something none of us had ever experienced before. Our late Town Clerk, Jonathan Williams, put it best in a memorable quote for the local newspaper: ‘it was as if the whole town was on holiday’. And local people loved it too. One of them described the ‘Folk & Boat’ as ‘like the Middlewich Carnival on steroids!’

There was no going back. The ‘Folk & Boat’ was here to stay!