Whalley: is this England’s seshiest village?

Lines of gear sniffed off car bonnets. Quiet village alleyways disrupted by loud shagging. A vicar and his wife harassed by kids hosting an illegal rave at an ancient monument.

Before 2024, if the North West village of Whalley was known for anything, it was its large Catholic cloister, Whalley Abbey, which was partially destroyed by Henry VIII in the dissolution of the monasteries. Today, however, the scenes reported in the press are from a very different kind of divide: the clash over England’s seshiest village.

In June this year, anger and frustration amongst Whalley’s residents erupted into national headlines. A boom in pubs and clubs was reportedly destroying the social fabric of a picturesque East Lancashire village – population just over 4000 – previously described by The Sunday Times as one of Britain’s best places to live.

One resident told the BBC it was ​“like the Wild West” and ​“at breaking point,” with another warning The Guardian of the ​“Blackpool-isation” of the area as it became a hotly desired spot for weekend booze tourists.

So, what is going on? Can it be that young people are choosing to flock not to towns and cities but to a quaint rural village? And what do the young people – not given a voice in the broadsheet and BBC articles about the dispute – think about the battle over Whalley?

I know Whalley. I grew up a couple of miles towards Blackburn in the bungalow suburbia of Langho, and went to a Catholic state secondary school just a mile from the village. Enveloped by rolling hills, here the industrial past of East Lancashire gives way to something visibly older, where Tudor cottages and Georgian shop fronts huddle closely facing the thick River Calder.

For me, Whalley was made for bored loitering under its dramatically tall railway arches, or early romantic successes at the village’s eccentric Victorian period dress Christmas shopping event. Once I got slightly older, during the rowdy peak of my underage drinking in 2009 and 2010, I gravitated to the innumerable pubs and clubs of large towns like Blackburn or Preston, even bringing my fake ID on the train over to Manchester. The stuffy and Olde Worlde pub scene of Whalley was far from my mind. In the last few years though, meeting mates there for pints, it’s become clear that Whalley is, well, popping off.

The first thing that hits you is the noise. Stepping out of a taxi on a blustery Friday night outside the quaint Toby Jug tea house, I’m hit by the cat in a bag wail of karaoke, innumerable drunken chats booming from packed pubs and restaurants, while buses and taxis ferry excitable punters to the square. Whatever you think a village sounds like, it isn’t this.

Why here? ​“If you’ve been out in Clitheroe,” apprentice toolmaker George, 17, explains of his hometown, the sleepy market town that sits on the border of Whalley, ​“after 12 there’s nowhere to go. So you go to Rio’s.”

Alta nightclub – as in, pray to tunes at the altar – has been in Whalley for decades under the names Minstrels, Rendezvous and, as innumerable fans still instinctively refer to it, Rio’s. Tonight, DJ Ciaran plays floor-fillers and crowd favourites until 4am (free entry before midnight, then a fiver until finish).

​“It’s shite,” grins Clitheroe’s Matty, 18, affectionately. He raises his voice in the busy Dog Inn over a group of lads failing to harmonise to Oasis on karaoke: ​“It’s rammed with bellends, the music’s shit, but it’s somewhere to go, isn’t it?”

Economics student Harry, also 18, was born and raised in Whalley and is more evangelical about the club’s appeal. ​“You’ve got all your friends there,” he explains, leaning against a wall in the beer garden. ​“Everyone you grew up with, the year above, older brothers, sisters. Some people I’ve spoken to think it’s a bit tacky.” He pauses. ​“But what nightclub’s posh?”

Longstanding staffing shortages and industrial action on the region’s beleaguered Northern Rail network has, to teenagers in the area, unexpected benefits. ​“We get a free train, don’t we?” laughs one of the lads about the lack of staff to check tickets on short-distance trips from Clitheroe or Blackburn, saving a hearty £2.50 towards beer money.

Though Whalley is uniquely regarded as a nice place to live – various people I speak to without prompting describe themselves as ​“privileged” to have grown up in a place with such low crime and friendly neighbours – the village is at a literal crossroads of stark class differences.

Journalists have reported on Whalley’s Ribble Valley, as rural and affluent, though the area is also neighbour to some of the North West’s most deprived boroughs: Burnley, Hyndburn, Accrington, Rishton and Padiham. These areas were once served by the thriving nightlife of Blackburn and Burnley; today, those two towns have fallen off a cliff.

In 2012, Blackburn had the highest number of pub closures of anywhere in the UK. Clubs followed: the indie music orientated Live Lounge shut in 2013. Liquid and Envy, at its pomp a thriving 1600 capacity superclub, shut in 2015. Longstanding and much-loved queer space The Stage Door followed. When the pandemic arrived, Blackburn had almost no nightlife left to feel the blow.

Right now, something similar is happening in Burnley, a town that’s a 25-minute drive away from Whalley. At the start of 2024, Burnley’s late night Mode club – which changed its name from Vogue after a hilarious dispute with the magazine – closed for good. Smacks club, which has been in the town since the 1970s, endures, but with concerns for its future following the recent death of its owner and manager Paul Bentley. Lancashire loves dancing – as the soaring popularity of the remarkably raucous summer Beat-Herder Festival can attest – but have few options.

​“People in Burnley want places to go,” says Bethany from Burnley, who, at 26, juggles retail work with an Etsy business. For her, Whalley is ​“just a lively and bubbly place, and you always end up seeing someone you know.” Where she used to go out in Burnley, these days she hits Whalley’s Salvage Yard restaurant and The Aviary cocktail bar. Her friend Ella reckons that Covid ​“ruined Burnley.” Ella has a theory: ​“Everyone that turned 18 over those pandemic years just didn’t go out. So when it came to going out, nobody [in Burnley] did it.”

When Imogen and Evan moved to Whalley, it was after years of living in Manchester. Both in their late 20s, the couple have moved in with Imogen’s mum to save up for a deposit. ​“I almost knocked someone over,” Imogen recalls of her drive through Whalley’s danger zone earlier this evening. ​“There was a gaggle of girls and some lads play-fighting in the street – but it’s like that every weekend.” The first thing Evan noticed upon moving to Whalley was its growth. ​“That’s [down to] new housing,” he tells me between sips of Guinness.

Indeed, it isn’t just booze tourism fuelling Whalley’s nightlife, but Whalley’s own growth. Where nearby villages have remained one-in-one-out for generations, Whalley is on the up: its population grew by 1000 in the decade before 2011, and 500 in the decade after that.

As a result of this increased footfall, Evan has noticed that locals now tend to go out on Thursdays, before the crowds arrive. ​“If we come out on a weekend,” he says, ​“there’s a bouncer on every single door, often saying it’s full. That’s an immediate barrier to anyone local.”

It seems hilarious to hear locals referring to Whalley’s quaint high street as The Strip as though we’re in Ayia Napa rather than rural East Lancashire, but tonight that’s exactly how it feels. The pubs are heaving, and there’s a palpable buzz as ​“one more pint” turns out into staying out for the night.

​“I’m from a city where that’s a normal weekend thing,” Evan continues. ​“Isn’t that how it goes? If you’ve got a strip, you’re going to get people who are out to get pissed. Maybe the village hasn’t had that before, but it’s semi-normal in 2024.”

One source of resident anger in reporting on Whalley is drinkers travelling there from as far as Evan’s home city of Manchester. Whalley is one hour – or two cans – away from the city centre by rail. The Manchester Model’s soaring gentrification has made £6 pints the new normal, and it takes only a few drinks here to recoup the cost of your train fare.

So far, however, reporting on Whalley has been misleading. The BBC, for instance, wrote that there were 35 licensed establishments in the area, which adds up to one pub for every 120 residents. In fact, THE FACE could find only nine licensed pubs and bars, six restaurants and a handful of off-licence shops in the village itself.

Much reporting on Whalley has centred around perceived ​“anti-social behaviour” in the village. Walking around Whalley on a weekend, there is no visible low-level crime on show – in fact, punters young and old seem to agree that Whalley is a uniquely safe place to live – but plenty of noise and general rowdiness and cheer.

​“It is always young people who get tarred with that brush and I don’t think that’s necessarily the case,” argues 19-year-old Aaron Wilkins-Odudu. ​“Partly, I think it’s a class issue. This is a small minority, but there’s an element of others looking down on people who are not from [here]. I’ve had experiences out in Whalley when there’s been rowdy behaviour from older people who I know live in the village.”

Last summer, Aaron’s teenage life changed immeasurably when he was elected unexpectedly onto Ribble Valley council as the Labour candidate by just 10 votes. Today, he’s one of Britain’s youngest councillors, a symbol of a changing Whalley who describes himself as a proud – and outspoken – socialist and supporter of Zarah Sultana.

Aaron moved from Merseyside into a Whalley new-build when he was seven. ​“There still aren’t many people of colour in Whalley, and definitely not many Black people,” he says. ​“That, at times, felt othering. But the vast majority of people were very kind and very welcoming.”

On the May 2023 night that he was elected, Aaron tells me that his Conservative predecessor refused to acknowledge his successor or shake his hand – even when offered a second chance to do so. This year, Whalley elected its first Labour MP since the second world war, when Maya Ellis defeated the longstanding Tory member Nigel Evans, a seat held by the party since its creation in 1983 in an area that has voted blue every election since world war two.

Aaron is positive about Whalley’s nightlife, though he’s also worked directly with residents experiencing anti-social behaviour. ​“But then again, I’m also a 19-year-old who does go out to the pub and certainly does have the odd night at Rio’s. I’m constantly struck by those two conflicting angles.” Aaron’s message for residents is that thriving nightlife helps Whalley more than hurts it. ​“Whalley wouldn’t be sustainable if people didn’t come from outside the Ribble Valley,” he says. ​“There is no disconnect between people spending their money in local business and that money funding the swimming pool or bin collections.”

The largely picturesque and desirable Ribble Valley has often stayed aloof from the rest of Lancashire, which continues to show the strain of punishing austerity and underinvestment. If Whalley is Jekyll and Hyde, and that its pleasant face can, come the weekend, become something altogether more difficult, then its character reflects Lancashire more broadly. Whalley is one of East Lancashire’s last remaining nightlife hotspots; a source of huge affection and joy for those that drink there, and who have grown up watching thriving town centres wound down and boarded up. It would be devastating to see it policed or licensed out of existence.

​“Whatever’s been going on,” sums up one 20-year-old drinker, rolling a cig outside the 19^th century The De Lacy Arms on Whalley’s newfound strip, ​“that’s not really a Whalley problem is it? That’s an England problem.”