Wingates Brass Band are an innovative musical ensemble with a contemporary outlook on brass band music.

Wingates Band is a Championship Section brass band based in Wingates, Westhoughton, which is a village on the edge of Bolton, Lancashire.

Our musical director is Andrea Price, an ex featured percussionist of Black Dyke Band.
(- more details about Andrea below..)

Wingates Band was formed in 1873 by the members of the Bible Class of Wingates Independent Methodist Church in Westhoughton in response to a challenge thrown down by the members of the Westhoughton Old Band, which had existed since 1858, to develop brass band music in the region. Reflecting this origin, the band was originally known as the Wingates Temperance Band.

Early in the 20th century Wingates rose to become a member of the elite of brass bands. In 1906 it achieved the “double” by winning the British Open brass band championships and the British National championships. The following year, in 1907, the band repeated its success and retained both titles, completing the first “Double-Double” in the British banding world.

In total Wingates has won the ‘Open’ seven times and the ‘National’ on four occasions. The band won the French Open brass band championship in 2004 and 2006.

The Wingates story has had its ups and downs. In 1910 almost half the band’s members and senior committee personnel were lost in the Pretoria pit disaster, one of the worst in British mining history which claimed the lives of 344 men and boys, numbering cornet players, trombone players and horn players from Wingates Band.

William Rimmer
It was in 1891 that the band signed its first professional conductor, Mr William Rimmer from Southport. Mr Rimmer was one of the all-time ‘giants’ of the British band movement. By the turn of the century he had transformed Wingates into the finest brass band in the land resulting in the previously mentioned Double-Double which has only once been emulated once since then in the 1970s by the world famous Black Dyke Mills Band.

Since the 1900s Wingates has been regarded as one of the elite brass bands in Britain and by many as amongst the very best bands in the history of the brass band movement.