The Fleet Folkloric Forum community group in Belper

Chris Lewis-Jones, co-founder of the Fleet Folkloric Forum, remains green-faced for the entirety of our interview.

It’s not that he’s feeling queasy, or jealous about something – he’s just transformed himself in readiness for the Forum’s annual January wassail event.

In addition to his green painted face, he is crowned by a hat incorporating peacock feathers from Newstead Abbey and holly from Belper Deer Park.

In fact, Chris and his colleagues have got to be the best-dressed bunch I’ve interviewed.

Nickie Shaw and Alex Begg are also sporting green faces. Additionally, Nickie is sprouting a pair of horns and is sheathed in a green velvet cloak covered in leaves.

Alex, rather bravely given the subzero conditions outside, has donned a kilt. Jo Pedder, meanwhile, has a huge hat constructed of fir branches and Christmas decorations, with a front dungaree pocket just the right size to fit the several slices of bread he’s brought for toasting apple trees at the wassail.

Named after the street, The Fleet, where several members reside, Fleet Folkloric Forum was founded with the aim of injecting folklore and fun into the day-to-day life of Belper.

‘We were aware there was a lot of creativity here, and a lot of interest in local history’, explains Chris.

Fleet Folkoric Forum members (L-R) Alex Begg; Jo Pedder; Isabel Kennedy; Nickie Shaw; Ian Pringle; Chris Lewis-Jones Photo: Richard Bradley ‘We wondered how could bring those two things together. We looked at what was working well – there was wassailing at Crich, and at Makeney for example – so thought that was an obvious thing to do. We’re halfway between Crich and Makeney, so let’s have a wassail.’

The group’s first event was held in January 2022, attended by 15. A mere three years later, the event has become an established tradition in the town, attracting a crowd of well over 100 people.

Wassailing is a tradition involving the ritual veneration of apple trees to ensure a healthy crop for the year ahead. Historically associated with the cider-producing counties of south-west England, it has spread in popularity in recent years and made its way up north.

Derbyshire now hosts several wassails: as well as the two close to Belper, there have been events held in Wessington, Chesterfield, New Mills and Waingroves in recent years.

One unusual aspect of Fleet Folkloric Forum’s wassail is that it culminates in a Christmas tree burning ceremony at the recreation ground known as Fleet Green.

After parading around and visiting apple trees located in various gardens and areas of common land on The Fleet, I watch two men appear carrying a burning brazier on a pole, which is hoisted onto the Green.

Local residents have brought along their redundant Christmas trees, which are deposited into the brazier. It takes a few seconds for them to catch, the majority going off spectacularly like a firework, producing an angry hissing noise and emitting sheets of flame, blasting out welcome waves of heat into the icy evening.

Christmas tree burning on Fleet Green at the 2025 Wassail Photo: Richard Bradley Attendees are also invited to symbolically write down experiences and thoughts from the past year which are then cast into the flames.

This aspect of the ritual demonstrates the open-mindedness of the Fleet group in plundering various folk traditions and transplanting them to Belper.

‘It’s multicultural’, Chris explains. ‘One thing we do in our wassail is ask people to write on a piece of paper the things they wish to say goodbye to from a previous year and then burn it in a fire when we’re burning the Christmas trees. That came from our friend Biant Singh – it’s an Indian tradition, the Lohri tradition.

‘He joined in a wassail we did a few years ago. So, it’s evolving – Lohri influences, hip hop influences, whatever happens, we can use.’

Another tradition imported to Belper by the Folkloric Forum is Krampus. In Alpine folklore, Krampus is a terrifying horned figure accompanying Saint Nicholas on his December present-giving rounds, meting out justice to naughty children.

‘Nickie introduced us to Krampus Runs,’ continues Chris.

‘We started the Krampus Run for a bit of a laugh, really. We’d seen the Whitby Krampus Run, and Sherwood Forest do it too, so we just thought we’d give it a go,’ adds Nickie.

‘A couple of us got dressed up and we ran it alongside a collection for the local food bank. It actually snowed on the day, so the weather supplied us with some suitably Alpine conditions to Belper!

The group are equally keen to research, revive and reinterpret Belper’s indigenous traditions.

An Alpine custom transplanted to Belper – the Krampus Run Photo: Nickie Shaw ‘Wherever you get people living together with a strong sense of community, which we found in abundance in Belper, there will undoubtedly have been folkloric practices,’ Chris theorises.

‘For instance, street dressing was a big thing – people used to compete, street-by-street, to dress their streets with elaborate structures, full of flowers and paraphernalia. This was often linked to the tradition of well dressing, which in Belper dates to the 1830s.

‘The channels, meanwhile, are unique to Belper,’ Chris continues.

‘They were so-named by the Nailers – former workers in the town’s nail-making industry, which at one point employed 1,400 residents.

‘The Nailers needed to get the shortest route from their forge to wherever the nails or the iron rods were being collected. That’s where the channels come from. So that’s something really specific to Belper.

‘We also do Channel Swimming, which involves participants wearing suitably aquatic-themed fancy dress and acting out “swimming” along the channels.’

The group, I am told, also discovered that donkey riding was onca popular pastime in bygone Belper.

‘It was a significant thing for at least 100 years until the end of the 19th century, when it was banned because it became so competitive it always resulted in violence’ Chris explains.

Consequently, the group constructed a series of ‘May Mares’ – painted wooden hobby horses which group members raced down the high street on May Day.

‘It’s really receptive here in Belper,’ Alex Begg enthuses. ‘The people love it. And they’re not surprised, and don’t feel at odds with it, it’s something they can get on board with, and don’t feel affronted by.’

‘In front of the library, there was a bit of a fracas, wasn’t there? The first time we did the May Mares, I think we may have trod on someone’s hooves’, remembers Isabel Kennedy.

‘That was one librarian. She was just a bit freaked out because she wasn’t expecting us, I think,’ reasons Chris.

Why are traditions important to a town, I ask the group? Chris is the first to answer.

‘Folkloric culture gives us the space to ask ourselves important questions: who we are; where we are; what we want; what we’re happy with; what we want to change and how can we do that?’

‘It’s really important that people have an opportunity to step outside of the commercial world a little bit,’ Alex adds.

‘Critically, it can be done by anybody – we’re a group of people, we’re wildly inclusive, and we do things that are just ourselves, but also things where there is audience involvement.

‘The audience is part of breaking the bounds of the normal capitalist interactions that take place. But it’s not restricted to us – anybody could do this. It’s a little bit of ownership of the street, or the park, or a walk’.

‘To me it feels like play,’ chimes in Jo Pedder. ‘It’s an excuse for me as an adult to play. Like the May Mares, we’re frolicking around the high street on hobby horses and entertaining people in a way I wouldn’t do walking down the street.

‘Normally I’m shy when I haven’t got the excuse of meeting up with this bunch and putting on a silly hat and going out and doing stuff. It’s like permission to be silly.’

Nickie Shaw agrees: ‘I think it’s about community. It’s about coming together, spending time with people who are like-minded, that don’t want to just sit in front of the TV and stay at home.

‘It’s got an energy to it – we’re all different, we’ve all got day jobs, but we all come together to do these wacky things for the community, and for ourselves’.

The costumes are important elements in the subversion, explains Forum co-founder Ian Pringle.

‘Those apple trees are in people’s gardens, which are private places. Our current way of living is all about our private property,’ he suggests.

‘And you are breaking that spell, of privacy, and property, and bringing the community around that, in a playful way. These guys, who are all greened up, with stupid things on their heads – it allows them to do that.

‘It’s like an amoeba – sometimes there are lots of people involved, sometimes it’s just four people at a monthly meeting; sometimes it might be 12, and it’s always different people coming in and out,’ concludes Chris.

‘And it’s really inclusive. There is quite a diversity of people who enjoy what we do. And whoever turns up with us is part of Fleet Folkloric Forum – if you come and do stuff, you’re a member.’