Thank You Astley Hire
Helping Thirty Five Beer Festivals
Thank you Astley Hire for supporting the beer festival since, well, since forever.
We managed to trace some mention of them as far back as our 2003 sponsors. This is only because 2003 is about as far back as our digital records go. Things get a bit murkey trying to go back earlier than there.
We gauge the beginning of the Bent and Bongs as being 1989/90. Way back then a few members of the Atherton and Tyldesley Round Table first proposed the idea of a beer festival to raise money for charity. One of those round tablers was Stephen Dorricott, a very active table member. Stephen was also, actually at the time of writing still is, a director of Astley Hire.
Astley Hire, as their name suggests, provide hire services for all kinds of plant, equipment, tools, kit, and generally all the things you need when taking on a serious project.
Stephen was straight onto the logistics and equipment side of all things needed to make this first beer festival a success. The kinds of things you don’t notice; fencing, door heaters, lifts for moving casks of beer onto the scaffolding.
You can’t run a beer festival without this kind of equipment, and if you are running a beer festival for charity you simply can’t do it unless a company like Astley Hire helps you. And oh boy have they helped over the years.
More Recent … Moreness
Not content with just helping us with site equipment, around 15 years ago Astley Hire also started picking up the cost of the printing for the festival beginning by sponsoring the cost of producing the tokens. A couple of years later they picked up the costs involved printing the sponsors’ tickets too. These days they also help with the staff tee shirts.
We want to give a special shout out here to Lorraine who oversees the production of the tee shirts and the printing. She’s a complete gem.
Sixty Years in Business
If we think the beer festival is doing well being established for 35 years, that’s only slightly more than half of the time that Astley Hire have been around. 2026 will mark 60 years in business. Let that sink in for a moment. Sixty. Years. In Business. That is one heck of an achievement. To be around for sixty years means you are doing something fundamentally right.
Astley Hire started in 1966 when Cyril Dorricott bought a single water pump to hire out to meet the demand that he saw was there. They grew and started to include industrial equipment hire, platform hire, industrial pump hire, and went from strength to strength.
Cyril’s sons Stephen (mentioned above) and Michael joined the business in the early 1970s and helped grow and steer the business for the coming decades.
You can read the Astley Hire story here.
These days they can help you with access solutions, heating, cooling, tool hire, cleaning equipment hire, scaffolding, and even training. And they still help us every year with the beer festival.
A nice touch is that each year Astley Hire tend to put a different logo or line of business on their space on the back of the staff shirts. We had a dig through the festival photos to find a few examples. If you have ever wondered how we choose the colour of the shirts each year, a part of this is to key in with whatever logo or message Astley Hire want on there.
A Word From Martin – Astley Hire’s Current Big Cheese
Astley Hire have proudly supported the Beer Bash since its very beginning. While it may have become something of a tradition for us, it’s one we truly love being part of. As a community-focused business, we’re always happy to give our time, money, and effort to support the event — knowing that it helps raise funds for local charities and makes our community a better place.
Although our services reach across the North West, our roots and our people remain firmly local. With our depot based in Leigh and many of our team members from the surrounding area, supporting community events like the Beer Bash is part of who we are.
Our commitment to the Beer Bash and to our local community will continue long into the future. We’d like to thank the committee for their hard work and everyone who makes the event such a success year after year.
Keep an eye out for the back of those Astley Hire t-shirts!
Get In Touch If You Need Anything
We are really big fans of asking you to use the services of the people who sponsor and help the beer festival. It’s a big community event. It raises money for charity and local good causes each year. And it wouldn’t exist without the businesses who sponsor it and of course the people who turn out on a freezing cold midwinter night to come for a few pints.
If you need industrial hire equipment such as powered access, cleaning equipment, heating and cooling solutions, or tower scaffolding, Astley Hire has the right tools to help you deliver your projects safely and efficiently.
Astley Hire offer more then just equipment hire at their Leigh depot, they also provide accredited IPAF and PASMA training to help you and your team work confidently and compliantly at height.
They help us. They’ll help you. Keep it local. Do good by the local community.
