The Leggers Inn, Dewsbury: Owners of 19th-century Yorkshire canalside pub have wedding marquee slashed before hosting Pride event

The Leggers Inn at Savile Town Wharf agreed to host the first-ever Dewsbury Pride in the 19th-century pub, which was built as the stables for the horses which used to haul barges along the Aire and Calder Navigation and named after the ‘leggers’, men who would pilot the boats through tunnels.

Yet the pub’s staff received abusive messages in the lead-up to the event last weekend, with threats of legal action, protests and demands that Pride be cancelled.

When they refused to back down, the night before the event employees discovered that a wedding marquee that had been erected in the grounds had been deliberately slashed with a knife and suffered £4,000 worth of damage.

The vandalism has put the wedding of a staff member, who was due to marry in the tent the following weekend, in jeopardy.

The Leggers is owned by the Lambert family, who restored the derelict canal basin and boatyard in the 1980s and refurbished the pub, which first traded as an inn in 1896, in 2008.

A statement from the pub’s management read: “One of our team members is due to be married in this marquee a week today. Yesterday it was vandalised in a hate crime as punishment for us daring to hold Dewsbury Pride on behalf of the Dewsbury Pride Foundation. We are desperately looking for a way to fix this for them. Whether with a temporary fix or a hire for one day to cover the wedding next week. Let’s pull together and save this couple the heartache of having to cancel the wedding because of the hatred of others. Thank you all in advance.”

Dewsbury Pride also released a statement about the incident, adding that members of the ‘local community’ were responsible for the harassment directed at The Leggers.

They added that they had set up a Gofundme to raise money to repair the marquee in order to ‘stand by them as they stood by us.’

West Yorkshire Police said: “Dewsbury Neighbourhood Policing Team are investigating after a report of criminal damage to a marquee off Mill Street, Dewsbury which is believed to have occurred overnight on Friday 14 July.

"The incident has been recorded as a hate crime and officers attended an event at the location the following day to provide reassurance and to engage with the community.

“Enquiries are ongoing and anyone with information which may assist is asked to contact Dewsbury NPT via 101LiveChat quoting reference 13230393551.”