Chesterfield’s famous Whit Walk returns after three-year absence

The event will begin at 9.45 a.m. on May 29, with an open-air service on Rose Hill. The Walk is scheduled to commence around 10.15 a.m., led by the Mayoral party.

This year, the route has been changed to bring the event to a wider audience, with the procession moving through the Market Place and along Vicar Lane, before returning to the town hall via Burlington Street and High Street for the closing ceremony. Rose Hill URC church will be open for refreshments during the event, which this year will be themed, following the Coronation, as “King of Kings”.

In the church calendar, Whitsuntide is the festival that celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit in power upon the disciples of Jesus at the Jewish feast of Pentecost. Their subsequent witness for Christ spread throughout the known world. The Procession is a symbolic “going out into the world” by the local churches in memory of the event that was, in essence, the birth of the Christian Church.

The Walk is held on Spring Bank Holiday Monday because it is the nearest British public holiday to Whitsuntide. This year it happens to fall on the 29th of May, which coincides with the weekend of both the festival as well as the 200th anniversary of the URC church at Rose Hill which has supported the event since the Walk began 173 years ago.