Bishop's Stortford Beer & Music Festival at Bishop's Stortford Community Sports Club in Cricketfield Lane
Festival season in Bishop's Stortford finishes this Saturday (Sept 17) with a beer and music extravaganza designed to entice all the family.
The picturesque Cricketfield Lane home of the town's cricket, tennis and Chantry squash clubs will host Bishop's Stortford Community Sports Club's third Beer & Music Festival.
The event, organised entirely by volunteers in arguably the best beer garden in town, will feature live bands, a DJ, separate real ale and gin bars plus a drinks marquee, food vendors and children's inflatables from 1pm to 11pm (last admittance 9pm).
It will be raising money for three charities: Suzy's Green Army – Breast Cancer Care, Isabel Hospice and Pancreatic Cancer UK.
Admission is £10 for adults and free for children under 18, who must be accompanied by an adult. Entry wristbands are available to buy from the clubhouse now. Dogs on leads are welcome.
Seven of the nine music acts lined up by Stortford's Bish Bash music festival main man Twig Smith will be familiar to anyone who attended the event in Sworder's Field on the Queen's Platinum Jubilee bank holiday weekend at the start of June.
The entertainment kicks off with Bishop's Stortford Ukulele Society performing covers from 1pm to 1.45pm. They will be followed by Stuart Purton's "shoddy metal band who do bad covers of classic pop songs" Impurtonence (1.45pm-2.15pm), blues rock band Blues Inc (2.35pm-3.20pm) and Joe Slater's acoustic pop set (3.40pm-4.25pm).
Then Stortford acid and nu jazz outfit Vertaal, led by Theo Howarth and Ajit Gill, will chill the crowd with a set from 4.45pm to 5.30pm, followed by alt country band Big Door Prize, fronted by Annabel Cowley, from 5.50pm to 6.35pm, and then nine-piece party band Swan Vesta Social Club performing an hour of Latino-inspired covers from 7pm to 8pm.
Award-winning Stortford band Hyde Away will air their original indie sound from 8.20pm to 9.05pm before headliners Radio Video bring down the curtain on music proceedings with a 60-minute set of classic covers at 9.30pm.
In between the live acts, DJ Graham McIsaac will keep the festival vibe simmering.
At 5.30pm there will be a tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Festival co-organiser Elaine Sedgwick said: "One of our long-standing members will read a short poem, followed by a minute's silence and then we'll play the National Anthem."
The main clubhouse will feature a bar selling 20 real ales from brewers including local firms Hadham Brewery (Community Gold, Hadham Dragonfly and Hadham First) and Buntingford Brewery (Polar Star and 92 Squadron) as well as Mauldons, Colchester, Bishop Nick, Wolf, Mighty Oak, Tring, Marston's, Timothy Taylors and Fullers. Pints will cost £4 and half-pints £2.
The gin bar will offer Blue Bottle, Pinkster, Martin Millers, Tarquin's Cornish Sunshine Blood Orange and Tarquin's Rhubarb and Raspberry as well as regulars Bombay Sapphire, Malfy Pink Grapefruit and Hendricks.
In the drinks marquee, there will be Carlsberg, Amstel and Moretti lagers (jugs £16-£18, pints £4.50-£5), Estrella at £3 per bottle, ciders, wine, alcohol-free Heineken and soft drinks – and a Pimm's and Prosecco tuk-tuk. Only alcohol bought from the bars can be consumed on the premises.
The food vendors will be Tasty Turk, Curly's Caribbean Kitchen, Smoke BBQ Kitchen, Thai Station, Ell Tacos and Ell Churros, and Coco's Crepes.
There will be free parking on the lower ground, which will close at midnight and reopen at 8am on Sunday, when volunteers from TUBS (Tidy Up Bishop's Stortford) will be clearing the festival field of litter.
Bishop's Stortford Community Sports Club (BSCSC) started off in 1979 as the Bishop's Stortford Sports Trust, managing the site's sporting facilities as well as the pavilions, clubhouse and grounds. It changed its name to the present BSCSC when it successfully applied for charity status in 2015.
The beer and music festival is sponsored chiefly by building materials supplier GRS and by North Street estate agent Russell Property.
