SADDLEWORTH’S Rushcart Festival may have been a staple on the calendar for 50 years and the traditions it upholds are far older than that.
But everyone has a first one and 2026 was Saddleworth Independent reporter Leslie Kerwin’s.
Here, he details what the impression the sights and sound made on him.
I HAVE asked three people now how they spent their Rushcart Festivals as children, and all have made some reference to battering musicians with pea shooters.
Granted, I imagine that was among the least troublesome hobbies of my dad’s Springhead childhood, but my ensuing pub chat with a couple from Dobcross only cemented my visions of Saddleworth’s guerrilla-warfare history long past.
This year, I was lucky enough to see my first-ever Rushcart Festival – and even luckier still that this year happened to be the 50th anniversary of the event.
Having grown up in the area of Stockport only known for having ‘the most joyless playground in the UK’, it is fair to say that my opinion of one of Saddleworth’s most revered traditions is worth less than the Poundland notebook I scrawled it in – but that does not mean I will not give it a go.
The Saddleworth Rushcart is not a party or a march, or quite like any festival I’ve ever been to.
It is more like an immersive experience of a Tolkien novel. Thousands of people cram into a heaving mass as they shuffle into the centre of Greenfield, already eyeing the long walk back up to Uppermill.
For me, it was not the intoxicating excitement of the crowd to hit first – rather, it was the stench of beer wafting in the breeze.
The performances start as they continue throughout the rest of the villages: with neat, toy-soldier lines of Morris dancers jingling along to fiddles and accordions. There is plenty to take in at ground level alone before it occurs to you to peer upwards, where sits the jockey atop the cart himself.
The three-tonne, 16ft cart takes over a month to prepare, I’m told, and contains the names of members – both past and present – of the Saddleworth Morris Men.
As the day progressed, it would be dragged inch by inch skyward to Uppermill, before trundling along through the rest of Saddleworth’s villages.
It’s on this trip upwards I meet Cath Kenyon, of the Saddleworth Women’s Morris and Clog group. Having traipsed through the performances at Greenfield, Saddleworth Museum and Hare and Hounds pub already, it is a welcome reprieve to run into Cath after performing at St. Chad’s Gardens.
Having grown up in a family of cobblers, she says she has had some involvement in Morris for much of her life.
Not in the Saddleworth Women’s, mind. Another official women’s group, then? No, she says, not officially – women could not officially join until a few years ago. Pardon?
“I’ve been going to the Rushcart since 1974, and have only missed one,” she tells me. “But as a woman, I was never able to dance until more equal opportunity and inclusivity and diversity schemes came along.
“The Morris Ring is like a union of all Morris clubs. Lady dancers weren’t allowed to join the Morris Ring until relatively recent times, about 2018. Even if you were a mixed team, and you had men in it, because you had women in it, you couldn’t join.”
Earlier that week, the Saddleworth Women’s Morris and Clog group danced before the Morris Ring to become full members – and were officially accepted on the Tuesday.
“In Morris, you’re a whole family,” she added. “It’s just one whole community, and it’s a family event – everyone should come to it.”
The conversation leaves me much to chew on the next morning during the hike to St. Chad’s Church, Uppermill.
With no WiFi, no phone reception, and no sherpa, I find it nothing short of a miracle I made it – not to mention the poor bunch lugging the three-tonne rushcart.
The Sunday half of the Saddleworth Rushcart promises a host of new characters compared to the day before, among them being Saddleworth’s best gurners, worst singers, and an ‘endangered’ clog maker from Yorkshire.
Really, I do not know what else I could have expected.
The festival’s second half brings a fabulous opportunity to see all the bands you might have missed so far – in my case, Chelmsford Morris, of whom I had met two members in Greenfield the day before.
It is Caroline Allen and Penelope Morrison’s second trip out with the Chelmsford Morris bunch, who are donned in frilled dresses and rainbow stockings.
“I’ve done Morris and English country folk dancing since I was a child, so I’ve always been involved in it,” Caroline tells me. “Our group is a very, very friendly and supportive group.
“Morris dancing is really good fun, it keeps you fit, and keeps your mind going since you’ve got to learn the dances.
“The whole atmosphere here is brilliant. It’s just fabulous.”
‘Really good fun’ – that about sums up the Saddleworth Rushcart. A heaving mass of jingle-belled men and women jumping through the streets, laden with beer steins, floral hats, and handkerchiefs in the blazing sunshine.
It is a far cry from anything you’d see out in the city, or even out in the sticks beyond Saddleworth. I is mental, it is bizarre, it is like nothing I have ever seen. Will I be here next year? Absolutely.
‘Did my dad ever feel a hint of nostalgia for this gem of his heritage?’ I find myself wondering. I approach him with the question afterwards.
“Well, back then you used to be able to take the ends off pea shooters,” is his only reply. “I used to sit there: ‘Pft, pft, pft, pft,pft’…”
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