Hundreds will take part in the midsummer parade this weekend

Britain’s oldest midsummer parade returns this weekend less than an hour from Liverpool.

Chester will be transformed on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 June as the city unites for the historic Midsummer Watch Parade.

The Midsummer Clock Parade, which began in 1498, is Britain’s oldest street parade and features a vibrant mix of characters including dragons, angels, unicorns, green men and Cernunnus, the Celtic lord of the forest.

Setting off from Town Hall Square at 2pm, the parade will be led by the City Guilds, the Mayor of Chester and Chester’s Karamba Samba Band.

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The Midsummer Watch was originally performed by the City Guilds at Midsummer before being disbanded in 1670. It was then revived over 300 years later in 1989.

When it returned, the parade featured the Chester family of giants, four-metre towering figures modeled after a father, mother and two daughters. They were created using descriptions from the city archives of the original medieval parade.

Since then, several other figures have been added to the parade, including an antelope and a hippogriff from Greek mythology. This year the parade will be joined by a new pirate ship led by the Chester Pirates, tracked by the Royal Navy.

The inclusion of the pirate ship follows a successful crowdfunding campaign to build the float after research revealed a ship had previously been part of the parade in the 1600s.

Discussing the new pirate ship, Russell Kirk, Art Director of Midsummer Watch, shared with CheshireLive: “We have some contemporary documents dating back to the sixteen hundred or so that list everything that’s on parade; so what we have done in the last twenty years is rebuild it.

“Initially, the ship is listed as a ‘ship of fools’, which would literally be about a ship full of buffoons and all kinds of crazy people. So this was a reinterpretation of a ship of fools into a pirate ship.”

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