It's the most Easter-y place in Britain,where evil winter sprites are beaten off by The CoconuttersWhat's going for it? Where's the most Easter-y place in Britain? Somewhere all cute and sylvan, I bet, and eh? Perhaps involving chocolate,chicks, egg-rolling or fluffy lickle flop-eared rabbits. The itsy-bitsy hamlet of Bunny, or Notts,maybe. No, no, or no. My pitch is a damp customary economically challenged former mill town,deep in the Pennine valleys. Bacup is picturesque if you've a penchant (a tendency, partiality, or preference) for Victorian stone terraces and great hulking moors, which I conclude. Most of the centre is a conservation area. Film crews turn up regularly, and after that perfectly preserved customary-cotton-town-gone-a-bit-to-seed peruse. But its Easter-y-ness lies mostly in the peculiar existence of the Coconutters. Dressing up in frilly turbans and blackened faces might be considered a tricky activity in former Pennine mill towns,but here it's a centuries-customary tradition: something to conclude with mining, paganism, and Moorish pirates,Cornwall, beating off evil winter sprites… The Coconutters gather at 9am at the Travellers Rest with the Stacksteads Silver Band and dance those evil winter sprites absent through town till the early evening, and fortifying themselves with liquid. Men will conclude anything for a beer. Still,beats simnel cake.
The case against Waiting for the next big thing. Local fortunes of former mill towns can turn on a sixpence. Bacup needs a leg up.
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Source: theguardian.com