Garstang Childrens Festival

Each year, Garstang celebrates spring with the Garstang Children’s Festival, normally held the Spring Bank Holiday Monday.

This festival has been running for over 100 years and is one of the few remaining Whit Week Walks.

The festival runs from 11 until 19:00. The festival comes to life with street processions, children’s activities, sports tournaments including netball and football, a fun fair and playing fields and the crowning of the Festival Queen, just to name a few.

The crowning, which is held at the Market Cross, kick-starts the event and immediately after, a procession of Morris dancers, former festival queens and visiting queens from other areas make their way through the town. Members from the Garstang gymnastics school as well as scouts an d guides take part.

The festival hosts a number of bands each year, at the 2010 festival there were seven bands: Pilling Brass Band, Brindle Brass Band, Red Rose Brass Band, the Hyndeburn Comets Majorette Troupe, Bolton Scottish Pipe Band, Lancaster City Brass Band and Batala Lancaster.

Other children’s activities at the festival include professional face painting, Punch and Judy shows and performances from Garstang’s School of Gymnastics, Morris dancers and the Hyndeburn Comets Majorette Troup.

In the evening, the festival continues with a fancy dress parade, which provides the perfect opportunity for you and your little ones to get involved with the event. During the festival there are a number of competitions that children can enter such as the fancy dress competition, the sports tournaments and the tableaux.

The sports opportunities available for participation during the festival are: football, netball, cricket and a variety of races including flat races and three-legged races, which are divided into appropriate age groups. The festival concludes with the final football match.

The earliest record of the Garstang Children’s Festival dates back to 1871. Due to a fire, the official records linking the festival to that date have been lost, but the festival committee maintains that the date is legitimate and accurate.

The festival arose out of the popular Whitsun Walks, an event marking the Whitsun holiday weekend, were participants would dress in their Sunday best and walk through the town or village preceded by a band. Each group of participants would sing songs and hymns as they walked; the event was concluded with a meal. The Garstang Children’s Festival used to be held on Whit Monday.

Official records show that at the Garstang Children’s Festival on 21 May, 1921, each child who participated was given a threepenny bit.

In 1934, over 300 children took part in the festival. During the same year, the egg and spoon race had to be cancelled due to the scarcity of eggs and lack of spoons!

Another interesting fact from the 1934 Children’s Festival is that the winner of the fancy dress parade was in costume as Adolf Hitler.

The Garstang Children’s Festival has changed tremendously over the years, but one thing has stayed the same: the festival is an exciting opportunity for families to enjoy a day out full of history, entertainment and activity.