Kirkgate Quarter Chronicle June 2026

It seems that April showers have landed late for us this year! But the gardeners among us will be grateful for the recent change in the weather, and you can always find something fun to do in the dry at Kirkgate.

This month we’ve got Celia Burbush leading a day long Harbourside Painting Workshop as part of our crafts@Kirkgate events. Covering some introductory exercises to build up your basic understanding of watercolour painting and the particularities of harbour life, we will move to a longer painting further in the day, following Celia’s lead. Get ready to activate the imagination, breath in that salty sea air! As with all of Celia’s workshops, the day will be gone in a flash and you’ll be surprised what you can achieve!
Book your place on the Harbourside Painting Workshop here
We’re well into this years crafts@Kirkgate workshops, and what a variety there has been! Take a look below to see if any upcoming workshops take your fancy.
Don’t forget- we now have a monthly crafters social at the Kirkgate too, where you can bring along a project you’re working on and swap tips with other crafters over a cuppa (or even a glass of wine).

@Home@Kirkgate

We’ve got a very special gig this coming Saturday. We’re fairly sure that Albi and the Wolves are the furthest travelled performers to grace the Kirkgate stage, all the way from New Zealand! Not only that but we are the first date on the UK leg of their debut European tour, and the only chance to see the full band in the UK. If that doesn’t deserve a BIG GIG alert we don’t know what would!

We hear from frontman, Chris, below…
“Albi & The Wolves was a band that fell together somewhat. I (Chris Dent) had known Micheal Young since I was a kid, and an ex bandmate of ours kept talking about this hotshot violinist called Pascal Roggen. He insisted we play together with him, which was lucky, because from the first show knew we had a great rapport. A shared joy for acoustic music, exploration, and a deep love of puns (Most of the time anyway).

We all live in Auckland, New Zealand. A medium sized sprawling city of 1.5 million people, where there aren’t many skyscrapers, rather lots of little towns enveloped by houses. It’s a skinny part of the North Island that’s squashed between rugged west coast surf beaches and golden sandy beach on the east coat.
We are, for want of a better word, a group of nerds with wildly different music backgrounds. I hit the ground singing and gigging, hitchhiking my way around the country learning stagecraft, and penning songs. Pascal studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and has a Masters in Jazz. He also inhales any music style or project that’s sent his way, so, when we plays his 5-string electric violin it’s always unique. Micheal Young comes from a bluegrass and swing background, and honed his skills for years while sailing around the Pacific before making New Zealand his home. Rather then the guitar or mandolin he’s known for, he plays double bass in this band.
We love this impromptu performance from the band, on a train in Germany!
Click on the image below to watch…
So, we have wildly different backgrounds, but we have managed to make three albums together. The first of which won an award at the New Zealand Music Awards in 2018. We also love to play and will travel very far to do so. This can be pretty glamorous stuff like WOMAD in New Zealand, or a shack on the rainy West coast of the South Island that’s no where near anywhere.
This is our first European tour so we are very excited. The train journey have been long, but the audiences have been delightful! We land in England on the 12th then will wind our way down to Cumbria to meet you all, and we couldn’t be more excited. See you all soon at The Kirkgate on the 13th of June!”

Thanks so much Chris! We’re looking forward to seeing you, and the Wolves, on Saturday!
Book your tickets for Albi and The Wolves here

Pride@Kirkgate

We couldn’t let June go by without a word from our friends at FEVER! It is of course pride month this month, and we’re delighted to be welcoming Summer Salt, Aura Gasm and friends back for another night of fabulousness!! It’s been a few months since we’ve seen them, with the last cabaret night being the New Year’s Eve extravaganza…
“We had such a great night seeing in the New Year at Kirkgate. We love our Cockermouth audiences, such a friendly and warm bunch, you can really feel the love at the Fever Cabaret. The new lighting has been such a bonus for us- anyone who’s been to one of our shows will know what a colourful bunch we are! Having full colour control at the push of a button just lifts the show to another level, and with moving lights thrown in too there’s even more drama to the performances.
June is pride month, and we always try to get to the Kirkgate for a special show to celebrate with our West Cumbrian friends. It’s time to get your glad rags on and join us for another night full of fun and glitz, with Aura Gasm leading the way through the glitter and lip gloss. We’ve got Venice and Sissy joining Aura and of course Summer Salt. You can follow the FEVER team on Instagram for all the latest gossip.

We know times are tough at the moment, so we’re hoping our regulars got their early bird discount code… check your emails if you haven’t booked already, you’ve got until Friday to use the code we’ve emailed. If you’ve been to a fever night before and haven’t had the code get in touch with katie@thekirkgate.com before the 12th June.”
We remember the very first Fever Cabaret that Summer Salt put on at the Kirkgate, and the nerves about whether Cockermouth was ready for such a flamboyant show! We’re delighted that these events are so well received, and that our Fever fans are such a warm and welcoming bunch. There’s another tech treat for them this time, as we now have a wireless microphone, thanks to funding from the Lakes to Sea Community Panel. Expect some action in among the audience!

Kirkgate History and Heritage

This month we hear from a new member of the Heritage Group, welcome to the team Eloise!

“I’m a new volunteer with the Heritage Group, and I’ve only just begun to discover the collections at Kirkgate. As I learn more about our local history, I thought I’d share a selection of the oddest things I’ve stumbled across so far.
And since the end of May gave us an actual Blue Moon, I’ve picked a few oddities that happened ‘once in a blue moon’ in our town.

Cockermouth is a river town and has seen a fair share of flooding over our long history. The winter of 1895 brought a much colder spell of weather. Both the river Cocker and the Derwent froze over completely. There are photos of locals skating on the ice, and some built a large icehouse out of the blocks. The photo below shows this amazing creation, which would certainly have been a curious sight!
As well as being a river town, Cockermouth at heart was a centre for the farming community. However, there are several instances when the community could view some far more exotic animals in the town.

In 1760, local quaker merchant and landowner Issac Fletcher records in his diary:

“Fri. 21st March 1769. Came to Cockermouth along with old Isaac Smithson. He came over about the differance between him & his son William. Heavy showers of rain. {To expenses for seeing Dromadery Camel & dog at Globe: 9d.”
Isaac was a diligent diarist at this time, but mainly perfunctory, recording his meetings, the measure on ‘the mercury’ and the weather. To see the postscript he makes to himself was rather a double take. I’d love to know what he thought of the spectacle, and whether it was worth the 9d he paid!

The full diary is available in Cockermouth Library, published in 1997 by A.J.L. Winchester.

The camel wasn’t the only unusual animal to be seen in Cockermouth. This photo taken c.1900 shows a large bear being walked down Main Street for the entertainment of onlookers.
Whilst this would be shocking to modern Cockermouth people- thankfully animal rights have moved on a lot in 100 years; imagine seeing a bear for the first time with no internet, no tv and no zoo visits. Once in a blue moon indeed!

Eloise Stott

Kirkgate Quarter

As we mentioned in the Kirkgate Chronicle a few months ago, a new production is coming to the Kirkgate later this year. The production team are looking for six local people to join a paid Community Steering Group and help shape the development of the project between August and October. Can you help?

“The Flood is a new theatre production set in Cockermouth one year after the 2009 floods. The Steering Group will meet twice a month and help shape how Cockermouth is represented on stage, contributing ideas, experiences and perspectives throughout the development process.
No theatre experience is needed and we’re keen to hear from a broad mix of people, whether they’ve lived in Cockermouth all their lives, moved there recently, were affected by the floods or simply care about the town.”

Key details:

Do please share this with your local friends and colleagues.

EMMA’S LETTER
Thanks to Eloise, our new Heritage Group volunteer, for her contribution to this month’s Chronicle. We’re looking forward to tonight’s heritage talk, with Becks Skinner. Inspired by a Wedding Dress from 1911, within The Beacon Museum Collection, Becks set herself the challenge of making a ‘going away’ outfit from the period, using her 1905 Frister and Rossman Sewing Machine and learning historical hand sewing techniques…. Something that might interest our crafters!

She will be exploring the fashions of the era, as well as taking us through her investigations into the owner of the dress, Mrs Davidson, through historical archives in Whitehaven, Egremont and St Bees.

If you have an interest in local history and heritage, and would like to get more involved with the Cockermouth Heritage Group, do get in touch with Helen (helen@thekirkgate.com) or come along tonight and meet some of the team. The talk starts at 6pm (with doors open at 5.30).

See you there,
Emma Heys
Chief Executive