Longton Carnival & Pig Walk Parade
April 2026 - April can be a funny month for weather. There have been years when you definitely need a jumper on and there’s been the odd one where there’s still been snow on the ground, so choosing to have a parade and carnival at this time might be seen as optimistic on a good day and foolhardy on another. Nevertheless, the fine people of one of the six towns that make up the City of Stoke on Trent have chosen it as the month for theirs.
The Longton Carnival and Pig Walk Parade is now in its fourth year and is as good a reason as any for a celebration in the Potteries as any, even if the reason for it is a little tenuous to say the least - but fair play to the organisers for taking full advantage of it.
To explain this tenuity, we have to go back to 1886, 140 years ago, when the Mayor of Longton, a chap named John Aynsley, and grandson of the original John Aynsley who founded Aynsley China in 1775, set a wager with the then Duke of Sutherland that he’d be able to drive (walk) a pig from the Dukes estate in Trentham, (now part of Trentham Gardens) to his own factory, in the centre of Longton. Today, that’s a distance of around four miles, in those days it may have been more, it may have been less, either way, it’s a good stretch in which to steer a pig, which are not the accommodating of animals.
Regardless of said difficulty, Mr. Aynsley rose to the challenge admirably, he succeeded and won the bet. His reward was a piece of land, a mile or so outside of the centre of Longton town, ‘to be used for the benefit of the people’. The piece of land became Queens Park and is still very much there to this day, sporting a clock tower, three bowling pavilions and three tennis courts, for good measure - not to mention a lake and a mature series of trees and gardens for you to perambulate on a summers day.
Now it took 136 years for someone to recall this tale and take advantage of it and turn it into the spectacle it is today, but nevertheless, that what Urban Wilderness CIC did, and with a few quid thrown in by the Arts Council of England, The National Lottery Community Fund and a plethora of other community funding schemes, the plan came to fruition and for each of the last four years it’s grown from strength to strength.
On the day, the sun is shining, it may be late April, and none of us know what kind of extended summer and heatwave we’re about to experience in the weeks ahead, but today Longton is taking full advantage of it, with far too much flesh on show than some people should be allowed to expose perhaps, but anyway…
The funfair is in full flow, every animal in the zoo is being painted on children’s faces, and you can even paint your own piece of pottery if you wish as a keepsake of your day. The City of Stoke-on-Trent Male Voice Choir is in full flow - which surprised me as I didn’t even know we had one, but it’s good to know that we do.
But, as is always the case with this kind of festival, it’s the parade - or in this case the walk that is the main event, and as the bells chime for the third hour of the afternoon, the assembled ‘paraders’, all lined up in the order in which they were to process begin to walk down The Strand, headings towards Times Square; less than a third of a mile in length and normally a brisk six minute stroll at best - but not today.
The sides of the road were lined with hundreds of people straining every sinew to see it all and to see and wave to those they knew that were in it. The youngest and smallest had been sat at the front ‘on the bricks’ as we’d say around here - the pavement to everyone else - although the road had been closed off to traffic for the whole of the day, so they should have been safe, well, until two idiots thought it’d be a good idea to ride their electric scooters down there for a laugh ! ! Fortunately, there were enough responsible people around to put a stop to it before any damage was done and they were handed over to the Police for whatever lesson they needed to be taught !
It didn’t dampen anyone’s excitement though and the parade was a wonderful spectacle for all to see and enjoy. The sights and the sounds made you wonder just how far the Pig Walk had come in just a few short years.
Peter Pan was alive and well, courtesy of pupils from Clarice Cliff Co-op Academy, the North Staffordshire Boys Brigade presented their version of Treasure Island complete with a galleon and plenty of doubloons, there was a Trojan horse and Scylla the Six-Headed Dragon by the Urban Wilderness Teen Squad, not to mention Father Time and Alice in Wonderland complete with a full deck of cards. Wonderful stuff.
Now, I don’t mean to be picky or moan - it was a fantastic display, but… the parade itself took around twenty minutes to get from the top of the road to the bottom and with so much to see it was hard to take it all in, so it surely begs the question, once it gets to the bottom, why don’t they turn it around and head back up, from whence they came? All that effort deserves more than a twenty minute performance, and I can’t imagine it would cost anymore to do it all again. Give everyone ten minutes to get their breath back, sure, but then give the hundreds, if not thousands of people that had lined the streets another chance to see it all again.
Too much to ask, I hope not but it’s not a bad thought, is it – and it won’t stop me from going again next year either. April, it seems, is not a bad month to choose for a carnival.
At the time of writing, the date for next year’s Pig Walk hadn’t been announced, but it’s usually the last Sunday in April, so put the 25th in your diary and keep track of any updates by looking at the Pig Walk website, which you can get to by clicking here…
You can find more images from the Pig Walk, by clicking here...
