| Where: | Bacup - all over town |
| When: | Easter Saturday |
| Time: | From 9am at the Travellers Rest, Britannia until 8pm (check links for full schedule and any changes) |
The Britannia Coco-Nut Dancers of Bacup are a uniquely dressed male folk- dance side who perform every Easter Saturday all around their town. They have blackened faces to conceal their identities and wear wooden discs at the knee (it is believed that their name comes from these discs being referred to as coconuts) as well as short white skirts, black breeches and jumpers, and rosette-decorated hats. They perform a series of seven dances including five with hooped garlands and are accompanied by Stacksteads Silver Band. The starting point is always the Travellers Rest at Britannia at 9am; by late morning they are in central Bacup, stopping in town for lunch, then they work they way around town with a few pub-stops for refereshment and out by the Rawtenstall road,
ending at the Glen Top Service Station area around 8pm.
Helpful Hints
In 2025 Easter Saturday is on 19th April – follow the links below for up-to-date news. and full schedule.
Click here for the Nutters’ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/bacupnutters
Click here for the event website : http://www.coconutters.co.uk/
We finally made it to Bacup & had a wonderful time following these unique dancers & exploring the North West. It was easy to get up close to the Dancers, especially at the stops away from the centre of town. It is a very local & uncommercialised event in spite of it’s uniqueness. When people out of the town (& even staff at nearby tourist sites) asked why we were visiting the area, we had an amazing number of blank looks when we mentioned the Dancers. This seemed sad after all the problems they’ve had with the police & Council. Traffic control & marshaling was excellent & hopefully problems threatening the event’s future have been resolved. It was useful to sort out the route the day before as some of the pubs no longer exist. The start for instance is at The Traveller’s Rest which is now a Consultant’s Office, but still has a pub-like appearance. Their lunch break lasted about 45 mins. If you lunch in the café opposite you can easily see when they emerge from the pub. There are a few stalls in the square by the Conservative Club in the centre of town & the excellent Bacup Natural History Museum close to the centre opens up for the day & has an exhibition about the dancers & runs raffles & competitions. Free parking is easy to find & public toilets are in the Market Place. We stayed in the reasonably priced Burnley Premier Inn, a short drive or bus ride away. It could be combined with a trip to the Rawtenstall Clog Cobbing event on Easter Sunday or Monday & and visits to the industrial heritage of the Textile Mill towns, the largest collection of Tiffany Glass in Europe at Accrington’s Haworth Museum & to explore the story of the Witches’ Trials in The Forest of Bowland & the Pendle Hills. Some people have accused the Dancers of being racist because of their blacked up faces. I saw absolutely no evidence that the blacking up is racist in the same way that the Black & White Minstrels groups were. They are following the folk tradition of blacking up as a disguise & were in no way intending to mimic or demean any racial group.