Congleton has gone by the nickname "Beartown" for so long that the name now appears on the town's own tourism branding, and the story behind it is one of Cheshire's most cheerfully self-deprecating local legends. Congleton once kept a dancing bear as an attraction for its annual Wakes celebrations, a common enough form of entertainment in earlier centuries. When the bear died shortly before one year's festivities, the town faced a crowd expecting a spectacle it could no longer provide, and, in the traditional telling, the town's alderman solved the problem by dipping into money set aside for a new parish Bible to buy a replacement bear, on the understanding that the Wakes takings would repay the fund afterward.
As the story passed down the generations it sharpened into a rhyme — "Congleton Rare, Congleton Rare, sold the Bible to buy a Bear" — that considerably overstates what actually happened. Local historians who have looked into the claim point out that no existing Bible was sold outright; rather, money that had been set aside for the future purchase of a new Bible was borrowed to buy the bear, a more mundane bit of civic accounting that nonetheless got flattened into the punchier and more scandalous version over time. Whatever the precise financial mechanics, the legend has proved durable enough to define the town's identity centuries later, and Congleton remains proudly known as Beartown to this day.
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