Quiz: Wigan Dialect

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Wigan is home to the annual World Pie Eating Championship, usually held at Harry's Bar on Wallgate, Wigan. The competition has been held since 1992 and in 2007 a vegetarian option was added. Wiganers are sometimes referred to as "pie-eaters". The name is said to date from the 1926 General Strike when Wigan miners were starved back to work before their counterparts in surrounding towns and were forced to metaphorically eat "humble pie".

he DW Stadium is owned by Wigan Athletic F.C., the club shares the stadium with Wigan Warriors Rugby League Football Club. It is situated in the Robin Park area of the town. The 25,000-seat stadium is rated as one of the best rugby league stadiums in the country. It was opened in August 1999, cost £30 million to build, and was called the JJB Stadium until 1 August 2009 when it was renamed the DW Stadium. Wigan Warriors and Wigan Athletic moved into the ground on its completion from their old homes, Central Park and Springfield Park respectively. Wigan Warriors compete in the Super League and Wigan Athletic play in the Premier League. The area has a strong tradition of rugby league, and the main rugby union team in the town is the amateur Orrell R.U.F.C.; before turning amateur in in 2007, the team was professional and played in the Guinness Premiership in the 1990s.

The first professional football club in the town, Wigan Borough, was formed in 1920 and was one of the founder members of the Football League Third Division North in the 1921/22 season. The team was withdrawn from the league in the 1931/1932 season.[92] Wigan Athletic Football Club was formed in 1932 and were elected to the Football League in 1978. The club was promoted to the Premier League, where they have remained there ever since, reaching the Football League Cup final in their first season.[93] The football club has ground-shared with rugby club Wigan Warriors at the DW Stadium since it opened in 1999, after 67 years playing at the Springfield Park stadium which had been Wigan Borough's home. The old football stadium was redeveloped as a housing estate after Wigan Athletic relocated. The town is also home to non-league side Wigan Robin Park Football Club.

Wigan's international-standard swimming pool in the town centre is closed for redevelopment as of 2010, but is expected to re-open in 2011.[94] It was built In 1966 at a cost of £692,000 (£9.6 million as of 2010),[95] Wigan BEST, called Wigan Wasps until 2004, is the town's resident swimming club. It has produced Olympic standard swimmers, including medal winner June Croft.[96][97][98]

Wigan has staged motorcycle speedway racing at two different venues. Poolstock Stadium was the home of Wigan Warriors in 1947. The team moved to Fleetwood in 1948, although they raced at Poolstock again in 1960. Woodhouse Lane Stadium was used briefly in the early 1950s when the team was known as the Panthers.[99]

Wigan Warlords are an Inline Hockey team, the current Under 16 national champions and European Bronze medalists. The club features players from all across Wigan and surrounding areas.[100]

Music

Wigan has been well known for its popular music since the days of George Formby Snr and George Formby Jnr. It was the birthplace of The Eight Lancashire Lads a dancing troupe who gave the young Charlie Chaplin his professional debut. One member of the troupe was a John Willie Jackson, The "John Willie" to whom George Formby would often refer in his songs. Local bands that gained wider repute include The Verve, The Railway Children, Witness, The Tansads, Limahl of Kajagoogoo and Starsailor. The Verve were one of the most important British rock groups of the 1990s, finding success in the UK and abroad (even touring on the USA's famous Lollapalooza alternative rock festival). The band was formed when the members met at Winstanley College in 1989.

From 1973-1981 Wigan Casino was the location for Wigan's weekly Northern Soul all-nighters. The venue began as a dance hall called Empress Ballroom. Wigan Casino rose to prominence in the 1970s, and in 1978 was named "best disco in the world" by Billboard, an American music magazine. The building was gutted by fire in 1982 and demolished the following year. This was the inspiration for the 1989 dance record Wigan by Baby Ford.

Wigan remains a centre of popular music for young people, with a number of alternative pubs/clubs in the town centre. The town also has a music collective which exists to promote the scene and help out local musicians and bands. They host bi-weekly gigs at The Tudor and also host various other activities such as the annual Haigh Hall Music Festival, which attracted around 7,000 guests in 2007. The Collective also offers recording sessions and gig advice for young musicians. Throughout the early 1990s The Den was a popular venue for bands with acts such as Green Day heading over to play. The Lux Club was a popular venue during the mid 2000's before it too was demolished. The town currently has a host of venues putting on gigs for upcoming local bands including The Tudor, Club Nirvana, Kings Electric, The Boulevard, The Waiting Room and The Swinley. NXNW have hosted the annual Wigan Festival of Art, Music and Literature known as North By North Western Festival. The collective is a voluntary non-profit making organisation and the festival takes place at various venues across the town.

The original "pier" at Wigan was a coal loading staithe, probably a wooden jetty, where wagons from a nearby colliery were unloaded into waiting barges on the canal. The original wooden pier is believed to have been demolished in 1929, with the iron from the tippler (a mechanism for tipping coal into the barges) being sold as scrap.

The name Wigan Pier was possibly invented by and was brought to popular attention by George Formby, Sr. in the Music Halls of the early twentieth century and later by George Formby, Jr. who incorporated it into his songs. Someone looking out of an excursion train to Southport in the fog and seeing a coal gantry asked "Where are we?" and was told "Wigan Pier". The tippler became the favoured location when people subsequently wanted to see it. There are references to it in songs such as On the Wigan Boat Express.

In 1937, Wigan was featured in the title of George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, which dealt, in large part, with the living conditions of England's working poor. In response to a critic, Orwell insisted "He liked Wigan very much - the people, not the scenery. Indeed, he has only one fault to find with it, and that is in respect of the celebrated Wigan Pier, which he had set his heart on seeing. Alas! Wigan Pier had been demolished, and even the spot where it used to stand is no longer certain." Some have embraced the Orwellian link, as it has provided the area with a modest tourist base over the years. "It seems funny to celebrate Orwell for highlighting all our bad points, but Wigan wouldn't be anywhere near as famous without him," says the Wigan Pier Experience's manager, Carole Tyldesley. "In the end George Orwell has proved to be a strong marketing tool." Others regard this connection as disappointing, considering it an insinuation that Wigan is no better now than it was at the time of Orwell's writing.

To see the difference, it is worth recalling a description of the canal scene from The Road to Wigan Pier: "I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance, stretched the 'flashes' - pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The 'flashes' were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water."

Today, the slag heaps have been removed or landscaped with trees, the factories are closed or converted to housing and the canal is only used for recreational boating and fishing.

Wigan's long history is reflected in its 216 listed buildings, of which are 20 Grade II*. As well as being a Grade II* listed structure, Mab's Cross is the only Scheduled Monument in the town out of 12 in the borough. It is a medieval stone cross that probably dates from the 13th century. There is a legend surrounding the cross that Lady Mabel Bradhaw, wife of Sir William Bradshaw, did penance by walking from her home, Haigh Hall, to the cross once a week barefoot for committing bigamy. There is no evidence the legend is true as there is no record that Lady Mabel was married to anyone other than Sir William Bradshaw, and several facets of the story are incorrect. Haigh Hall was built in 1827-1840 on the site of a medieval manor house of the same name, which was demolished in 1820. The hall is surrounded by a 250-acre (1.0 km2) country park, featuring areas of woodland and parkland.

The Face of Wigan, located in the town centre since 2008, is a stainless steel sculpture of a face. Created by sculptor Rick Kirby, The Face stands 5.5 m (18 ft) tall and cost £80,000.

The pavilion in Mesnes Park in Wigan

Designed by John McClean, Mesnes Park was opened in 1878; McClean was chosen to design the park through a competition. There is a pavilion in the centre and a lake. The Heritage Lottery Fund has donated £1.8M to regenerate the park and Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council added £1.6M to that figure. The pavilion and grandstand will be restored. The 12-hectare (30-acre) Mesnes Park is north-west of Wigan town centre. It receives 2 million visitors a year and hosts the Wigan One World Festival.

Wigan's war memorial was unveiled in 1925. Designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and funded through public donations, the monument is now a Grade II* listed building and commemorates the fallen soldiers from the town in the First World War and other conflicts. In 2006, the plaques bearing the names of the dead were stolen; a year later they were replaced through council funding. There is also a memorial on Wigan Lane which marks the site where Sir Thomas Tyldesley died in 1651 at the Battle of Wigan Lane.