Every Easter Sunday morning, the Lancastrian clog dancers known as Nutters, Nut or Coconut/Coconutters, dance 11 km (7 miles) across town and nearby areas for about 9 hours!
The dance has been performed for a 110 years since 1857.
Some of the actions of this particular dance show listening for sounds that could warn of the danger of tunnels collapsing.
The tradition of blackening their faces, dates back to when miners in the area danced when emerging from the mine pits, with their faces dirty with coal dust. Others say that mill workers danced to get extra money and painted their faces so that their landlords wouldn’t know and raised their rents.
Their name comes from the wooden nuts worn on the waist, wrists and knees made of wood, used down the mines when men often had to crawl.
The clogs, shirt and britches are traditionally from Lancashire, but the white and red skirt and hat/turban were adopted by Cornish tin miners, from Moorish pirates who came to England from the North of Africa, through Spain and France and stayed to work in the mines.
When the work in Cornwall diminished during the 18th & 19th centuries some of these Cornish miners moved to the North-West to work in the mines and quarries, bringing the tradition with them.
