Wakes week
holiday in England and Scotland
The Wakes Week is a holiday period in parts of England. Originally a religious celebration or feast, the tradition of the Wakes Week developed into a secular holiday, particularly in North West England during the Industrial Revolution.
Although a strong tradition during the 19th and 20th centuries, the observance of the holiday has almost disappeared in recent times, due to the decline of the manufacturing industries in the United Kingdom and the standardisation of school holidays across England.
History
Many Christian churches at their consecration were given the name of a patron saint, and either the day of the church's consecration or the saint's feast day becomes the church's festival. In England, church services began at sunset on Saturday and the night of prayer was called a vigil, eve or, due to the late hour "wake", from the Old English waecan. Each village had a wake with quasi-religious celebrations such as rushbearing followed by church services then sports, games, dancing and drinking. As wakes became more secular the more boisterous entertainments were moved from the sabbath to Saturday, and Monday was reserved for public entertainments such as bands, games and funfairs.
During the Industrial Revolution the tradition of the wakes was adapted into a regular summer holiday particularly, but not exclusively, in some parts of the North of England and industrialised areas of the Midlands where each locality nominated a wakes week during which the local factories, collieries and other industries closed for a week. The wakes holiday started as an unpaid holiday when the mills and factories were closed for maintenance.
Each town in Lancashire took the holiday on a different week in the summer so that from June to September each town was on holiday a different week.
“Wakes week” enters the record as holiday in England and Scotland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wakes, week and holiday can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wakes week” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.