Stonehenge Free Festival Information & Stonehenge Free Festival Links at HealthHaven.com

Dancing inside the stones, 1984 free festival.

The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1972 to 1984 held at Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating on the summer solstice on June 21. The festival was a celebration of various alternative cultures. The Tibetan Ukrainian Mountain Troop, The Tepee People, Circus Normal, the Peace Convoy, new age travellers and the Wallys were notable counter culture attendees.

The famous pyramid stage hosted many bands including Hawkwind, Gong, Doctor and the Medics, Flux of Pink Indians, Buster Blood Vessel, Omega Tribe, Crass, Selector, Dexys Midnight Runners, Thompson Twins, The Raincoats, Brent Black Music Co-op, Amazulu, Wishbone Ash, Man, Benjamin Zephaniah, Inner City Unit, Here and Now, Cardiacs, The Enid, Roy Harper, Jimmy Page and Zorch all played for free.

[edit] Spirit

By the 80s, the festival had grown to be a major event attracting up to 65,000 in 1984. Yet brief reports are the only coverage we have been able to find of the festivals in the mainstream press. Since the festival was closely allied to Glastonbury, 1981 was a festival to remember, Perfect weather, a fantastic lineup of bands, (see below) listed as the best free festival worldwide of that year (1981) some of these bands took a break from touring (Thompson Twins, Killerhertz, Hawkwind and the Lightning Raiders)to perform at this festival (at no fee) this enabled thousands of people who could not afford the pricey Reading and Glastonbury festivals, to have a beautiful summer celebration of their own.

The 1981 list of bands include Red Ice, Selector, Theatre of hate, Sugar Minott, Doll by Doll, Thompson Twins, Night Doctor, Merger, Androids of Mu, Deaf Aids, Killerhertz, The Raincoats, Thandoy, Foxes and Rats, ICU Lightning Raiders, Psycho Hampster, Misty in Roots, Andy Allens future, Inner Visions, Red Beat, Man to Man Triumphant, Stolen Pets, Seeds of Creation, Coxone Sound System Black Widow, Here and Now, Hawkwind, Steel and Skin, The Lines, Play Dead, Cauldron, Lighting by Shoe, Flux of Pink Indians, The Mob, Treatment, Popular History of Signs, The Wystic Mankers, Elsie Steer and Cosmic Dave.

[edit] Conflict

The festival attendees were viewed as hippies (and some were, in fact, self-described hippies) by the wider British public. This, along with the open drug use and sale, contributed to the increase in restrictions on access to Stonehenge, as fences were erected around the stones in 1977. The same year, police resurrected a moribund law against driving over grassland in order to levy fines against festival goers in motorised transport. However as late as 1984 the police-festival relations were relaxed: just a nominal presence (a PC + a WPC) in the car park. On solstice morning people sat on the stones and offered their spliffs to the police below, who politely declined. Stonehenge's meaning has been historically contested, and that trend was dramatically continued in 1985 when English courts banned the Free Festival from being held at Stonehenge. The ruling came so late that some Free Festivallers did not know about it, and several hundred attempted to show up in defiance of the ruling.

[edit] Battle of the Beanfield

The ensuing confrontation with police ended in the Battle of the Beanfield and no free festival has been held at Stonehenge since, though people have been allowed to gather at the stones again for the solstice since 1999.

[edit] See also

Phil Russell, aka Wally Hope, co-founder of the Windsor and Stonehenge free festivals

[edit] Bibliography

McKay, George (1996) Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties, chapter one 'The free festivals and fairs of Albion', chapter two 'O life unlike to ours! Go for it! New Age travellers'. London: Verso. ISBN 1-85984-028-0

[edit] External links