Bingley Canal Festival – Five Rise Locks 250 year celebration

Our jewel in the crown, the famous Bingley Five Rise Locks are turning 250 this year! For the occasion, Canal & River Trust is putting a whole day of activities and everyone is invited. Local communities are currently working on a programme with the charity to help out. This is going to be a fabulous celebration for the town and Bingley Walkers are Welcome will be part of it. Hope you can make it and please save the date:

Saturday 23rd March 2024 – from 10:00am to 3:00pm

Celebrate this special anniversary from town to towpath.

Walk along the canal to enjoy free paddlesports & fishing, history walks, boating trips, fish tank display, floating market, bushcraft & nature activities. 

Visit the Damart Café (next to the canal) to enjoy a special pop-up arts programme featuring talks, weaving display and demonstrations, plus poetry readings by Canal Laureate Roy McFarlane.

Back in town, Bingley Town Council will be hosting an artisan market in Bingley town centre, with live music and performances.

Despite the cold weather spring fever was in the air as Bingley celebrated the 250th anniversary of the opening of 5 Rise Locks. The entire community came together for the occasion. Walkers are Welcome helped out by offering guided walks to the locks to people who arrived from the train station.

The entire town was buzzing and we met some interesting characters along the way including Morris Dancers and a group of Steam Punk performers.

First conceived in 1766, construction work on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal began in 1770. Built by engineer John Longbottom under James Brindley's design, on 21st March 1774, Bingley Five Rise Locks and Three Rise Locks were officially opened. A crowd of more than 30,000 people turned up for the occasion. By 1777, the two end sections of the canal were open. But the money then ran out and work almost stopped until 1790. The final section was finally completed in 1816, 39 years after the opening of the Bingley section. The first complete crossing of the Canal set off on October 22 1816 and took five days to make the passage from Leeds to Liverpool.

Thanks to everyone who came to our beautiful town to enjoy the fantastic Bingley Canal Festival in 2018 and 2016. A third edition was supposed to happen in June 2020, however it was cancelled due to the Covid outbreak. Below are some reminders of what happened during the previous editions.

Saturday 19th May 2018 saw the second Bingley Canal Festival. It followed on the success of the first one organised in October 2016. At the time, it was only intended to be a one-off event of eight days across the North of England to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the official opening of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Read bellow for what happened in 2018.

In the town centre, we had both indoor and outdoor markets situated at The Arts Centre and Market square. As well as a multitude of stalls for people to view, there were bouncy slides, trampolines, rides, hot food and bars. Then singing from 3pm with the fabulous All Together Now choir!

On the canal towpath we had the amazing Kennet which came back (see 2016) just for the event! Then you were able to meet organisations such as Canal & River Trust Explorers, Lion Learners, Canoe Trail and RNLI. There were free boat trips and Walkers are welcome hosted two walks.

Our local businesses were open for refreshments and had entertainment at various points across the town throughout the day.

On Sunday 16th October 2016, the floating museum Kennet, an old working boat passed through Bingley Five Rise Locks accompanied by a flotilla of boats. This was to re-enact as much as possible of the razzamatazz that accompanied the very first complete crossing in 1816. It was part of an eight day crossing organised by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal Society with stops at various location along the full length of the Leeds and Liverpool canal. Bingley provided a particularly good location, given the period of travel from the bottom of the 3-Rise to the top of the 5-Rise. Thousands of people turned up on the day and the event was a great success!