The Comfortable GillGarden Party
For one Saturday in August, WN7 FEST moved out of Leigh and into a pub garden in Glazebury. Eight acts, a fairground ride, two food vans and around 350 people who stayed till the lights came on. Here's how it went.
A Pub Garden, Rearranged
The Comfortable Gill sits on Warrington Road in Glazebury, a few miles south of Leigh, and its garden is the sort of place that already half-looks like a festival site — a long timber shelter down one side, trees along the boundary, and enough grass to lose an afternoon on. We put a stage at the far end, ran bunting between the posts, dropped hay bales across the middle and opened the gates at noon.
It filled up faster than we expected. By mid-afternoon every picnic bench under the shelter was taken, the camping chairs had spread out across the grass, and there was a queue at both food vans. The day was a near sell-out, with around 350 people through the gate — a genuinely big turnout for a village pub garden, and enough to make the place feel properly full without ever feeling crowded.
This was the first thing we'd run anywhere other than Leigh Miners Welfare, and we weren't entirely sure how a WN7 FEST crowd would take to a smaller site. The answer, it turned out, was: very well indeed.
Eight Acts, Noon Till Late
The bill ran the whole day rather than building to a single headline slot — acoustic and pop through the afternoon while the garden filled, tributes once the sun dropped behind the trees, and DJ Dec taking it into the evening. In running order:
01Lucy HallOpened the afternoon 
02Kev WrightAcoustic set 
03K-PopDance and pop 
04Jiggy & FashPlus sax 
05Rhys Jackson“He’s One of Our Own” 
06Gerry Cinnamon TributeSingalong hour 
07ABBA TributeThe big one 
08DJ Dec“Back to the 80’s” — til late
The ABBA and Gerry Cinnamon tributes did what they always do — turned a field of deck chairs into a field of people standing up. Rhys Jackson, billed as “He's One of Our Own”, got the loudest local reception of the day. For who's playing next, see the lineup page.
Baps, Brews & Hay Bales
Two vans handled the food: Jackie's Baps on one side of the garden and a coffee, tea and cold drinks van on the other, with the pub's own bar running throughout. Smaller than the street food village we put on at Leigh Miners, and deliberately so — this was a garden party, not a food festival, and a bap and a pint in the sun turned out to be exactly the right menu.
The hay bales earned their keep. Scattered across the middle of the garden, they gave people somewhere to sit that wasn't a bench or a camping chair, and by late afternoon they had become the most sociable part of the site. If you want to know what to bring to something like this, our guide on what to take to a family festival covers it.
The Garden Party In Pictures
All 28 of them. Tap any photo to open it full size, then use the arrow keys.
What We Took Away From It
Three things stood out on the day, and all three are going straight into how we plan the 2027 weekender.
for a garden we had never used before, on our first go.
acts across eleven hours, with no gap longer than a changeover.
the age range in the garden, near enough, from prams to deck chairs.
- Small sites suit families. Parents could see their kids from anywhere in the garden, which meant nobody spent the day counting heads.
- Flat ground matters more than we'd realised. Wheelchairs, powered chairs and pushchairs all got everywhere they needed to, and it changed who could actually be there.
- A long, gentle bill beats a big headliner. Nothing peaked too early and nobody left at half six.
We wrote about that middle point at length — the day it turned out to be for everyone — because it was the thing we were least expecting and the thing we're proudest of.
Same Welcome, Bigger Site
The Garden Party is done for 2026. Next is the WN7 FEST 2027 weekender back at Leigh Miners Welfare — Country Music Day on the Friday, the full Family Festival on the Saturday, and everything the Comfortable Gill taught us about keeping a site easy to get around.
Or look back at WN7 FEST 2026 at Leigh Miners, and the rest of the gallery.