By Jill Stocks
St Margaret’s Church Horsforth will host Horsforth Beer and Music Festival this June and tickets are selling fast.
The event takes place over the weekend of Friday, June 6 and Saturday, June 7 and the organising team is made up of several Horsforth business owners, councillors and familiar faces.
The Reverend Nigel Sinclair is team rector at St Margaret’s, Lyndsey Acaster is co-owner of The Old Kings Arms on Town Street, Chris Hall is a local DJ, Dave Brosnan is a town councillor and represents Horsforth Town Team and Mark Costello is from Horsforth Brewery.
Lyndsey said: “I approached Nigel about two or three years ago. We worked together a lot during lockdown so we’ve had a good relationship since then.
“We planned to do it last year but it was just the wrong time to do it. Then we decided let’s move it to June. And we went from there.
“There’s going to be a few different bars there. There’ll be a bar from Horsforth Brewery and a bar from The Old Kings Arms doing gins, wine and proseccos.
“There’ll also be a beer bar, which we are calling Nigel’s Bar, which is where we are going to have all the sponsored barrels with all profits going to the church.
“The local community are sponsoring barrels so we’ve been going and asking all the local businesses. Even just individuals. A lady wants to sponsor a barrel in honour of her late husband.”
Rev Sinclair announced a couple of months ago that he would be leaving in the summer so this event will be part of the farewell to a much loved local figure.
“We’re really making it for the community,” Lyndsey said. “St Margaret’s is such an iconic building. Obviously it’s Nigel’s last year so it makes perfect sense to throw a big leaving bash at the church for him with loads of beer.”
As well as more than 30 beers from Horsforth, Kirkstall, Ilkley and other breweries, there will be food provided by The Wing Savant, who have just taken residence in The Old Kings Arms, Edges Pizza, Hooleos and Grilling Me Softly.
Barrels are available to sponsor for £200 each. For that any information or photos, be it business or personal, will be displayed on the handpump. Community groups who would like to have a presence at the event are also welcome and volunteers for stewarding or pouring beer are also invited. Contact Lyndsey for more details.
The Friday evening session is adults only with Go Your Own Way, a Fleetwood Mac tribute, the headline music act.
The Saturday afternoon session is the family friendly session, 12pm-5pm, which will see an appearance by Stormtroopers, a children’s Jedi training activity, board games with Cards or Die and face painting, as well as live acoustic music from Dave Prater and Bad Captain, a photo booth from Richard Heald Photography and a silent disco.
Saturday evening is again adults only with Old Skool Anthems headlining the music offering, joined by Colin and the Red Becks.
Tickets for all sessions are available from eventbrite. Each session is £5 per session and children are free. Lyndsey said they were keen to make it as financially accessible as possible.
“We’re really making it for the community. Obviously everyone’s struggling at the minute so we wanted to try and keep it as low as possible.”
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