Bickershaw Festival 50 years

The Bickershaw Festival was a rock festival held in Bickershaw (Wigan, Lancashire), England, between 5 and 7 May 1972. Except for the 1976–79. Deeply Vale Festivals, Bickershaw was the only major north-west multi-day festival with camping.


Forty year reunion

1972 BFI

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-bickershaw-festival-1972-online

BICKERSHAW FESTIVAL 1972 -THE GRATEFUL DEAD

Glastonbury and other rock festivals have had to be cancelled this year due to the Covid 19 situation, but how many of you are aware of Wigan’s very own rock Festival which took place in a boggy field in Bickershaw, on a wet weekend in May 1972?
It was labelled at the time the Wigan Woodstock, and was notable for the miserable weather and gallons of mud - impressive even by Glastonbury standards - the Bickershaw Festival was also notable for its quality line-up. Acts such as The Grateful Dead, Captain Beefheart, Hawkwind and The Kinks were all a great attraction.
Film maker Frank Rigby records how thousands of music fans turned up in a field in Wigan for an experience it would be hard to forget.
Were you there, do you recognise yourself in the crowds?

https://www.wiganlocalhistory.org/articles/bickershaw-festival-1972-the-grateful-dead

I remember it very well, the local TV, Granada and BBC Northwest were going on about it all week, and a lad at school, who lived in Platt Bridge told us of the weird and wonderful folk who were wandering about Platt Bridge that week, and he said he could hear the concert as a noise in the distance, maybe some of those weirdo's stopped in Platt Bridge


But at the time, and OK I wasn't that old, but with what they showed on the TV and the weather, for me it looked to be crap.