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This site is dedicated in the memory of

Roger Hutchinson,

who inspired me to delve deep into the magic of the free festival and who passed away Sept 3rd 2010.

R.I.P. Roger .....

A group of about 150 - 200 people travelled from Ashton Court Festival and camped on Inglestone Common, near Wickwar in Avon. At 7.30 pm on July 3rd, over 100 Police Officers conducted a drugs raid on the camp.
This provoked a confrontation at the end of which two Police officers and at least ten festival goers were treated in hospital. There were 13 arrests, 5 for drugs and the rest for assault, obstruction etc.
The festival goers, who are now commonly known as the 'Convoy' felt that the raid was sheer harassment.
The festival lasted for about three weeks and, other than the raid, caused no serious problems. Trench toilets were dug but were not sufficiently used.This caused some minor fouling of the woods. There was plenty of dead wood and damage to live wood was negligible. Water runs were arranged and kept going constantly.

Bob Nightingale,
RELEASE.

Darrren remembers
Arrived at festival just a few hours after site had been raided by hundreds of Thatcher's Gestapo, lots of people arrested etc.That is why buses are in protective semi circle formation.A few days later an angry mob consisting of local farmhands and what looked like a rugby team attacked and were repelled rather quickly. Alas I did not have my camera handy.
Good festival though.

At Inglestone, I well remember the police raid. I was sleeping in the tipi with the family, and remember being awoken by some shouting in the distance. I could just make out ‘pigs on site’. I sat up in my sleeping bag and suddenly this guy with long hair and a T-shirt emblazoned with a ‘Nepalese Temple Balls’ slogan burst in, and looking at me said, ‘quickly, wheres the stuff’. His nomenclature was clearly off, no one I knew spoke like that (he was drug squad), and within seconds, about five uninformed cops burst in and before you knew it they were zipping open sleeping bags and searched everyone, even the kids, before they were even awake. I think we were one of the first to be searched. We were in one of the only lodges, right in the middle of the site. The lodge door was emblazoned with the ‘Horus Eye' in a Pentagram (I was proud of that door, but Bender dave predicted it was too powerful a symbol to use - later the lodge blew over at Pontridhigroes. Before that, Moffs red lodge had burned down, his door was emblazoned with a sun symbol as far as I remember.) So it looked like an important target. But Ironically the site was mostly ‘dry’. No one had been able to score anything for days and we were experiencing that Furry Freaks saying, ‘“dope can get you through times without money, better than money can get you through times with no dope”. The cops lined us up outside and told us to stay put. We did for a few minutes as they moved on to search others, but there were not enough of them to watch us. Eventually a crowd started to gather as people woke up. We gathered outside a caravan where the cops found a small stash. They asked whose trailer it was. Everyone replied, ‘Boris and Doris’! Where are Boris and Doris! cried the cops, little did they know that Boris and Doris were a couple of Geese that were also camped with the caravan.

Greg Clark

1981 June 22nd-? Inglestone Common Fair

    Inglestone Common 81, the Pyramid Stage, now stageless as some day trippers burnt it for firewood! I used to really enjoy putting it up and taking it down, but bugger all to do in-between!

    Our bus, our being by this time 'Big' Chris Gibbs and me - Anthony Hewitt. It was the PSI bus (later to be the band Nukli - still going), but the band split up just before going on the road. We started looking after Nik Turner's Pyramid Stage about this time, after some numpties broke up the base for firewood.

    There was a big bender fire that year. I can't remember whose it was, but it was a big bender with several 'rooms' right next to our bus. The whole site responded very quickly and luckily no-one was hurt (very lucky if you think about it). In the end the only way to put the fire out was by pulling the bender down.

     I remember being very poor indeed at Inglestone (none of us signed on), and all we had was a sack of oats and a vast tub of milk powder, so we lived on muesli, porridge and flapjacks. It was a good few years before I could look a flapjack in the face again.

    Not too sure (hazy days), but I think we all came to Inglestone from Stonehenge. A few of us had a week or so at the Green Gathering at Pilton during this time, which was like the Green Party Annual Conference. This made a nice break from Inglestone, though we were a bit too hardcore for the Green Party crew, who weren't too comfortable about some of our carry-ons, like this humungous and awesomely powerful earth pipe we made there ( see below ).

   And then the convoy fucked off up north, to what was meant to be Deeply Vale, where all went well wrong. It was hard getting the convoy through the little lanes to the M5, but it was a hell of a feeling to drive the M5 and M6 in convoy, looking forward and back at the line speeding down the motorway (at the pace of the slowest). We pretty much took over service stations.

   However, this sort of backfired, and we got ambushed on the M6 by mucho police, blocking the whole northbound carriageway. Lots of normal folk were stuck there too, and I think they were terrified (I know I wasn't too happy), as things were quite ugly between us and the police and could have been a lot more so.

   We were in all the national papers the next day (I still have some of the cuttings my mum collected!). The further north we got the more we were split up, harried and picked off by lots of police, and then all left on the edge of some dangerous quarry, before relocating to a site on Darwen Moor, another festival altogether.

Right: Possibly a poster from 1980, as the dates are wrong for 1981, but who knows, these things were always pretty fluid anyway . Poster courtesy Anthony Hewitt

Dain at the tower overlooking the festival site © Fred

This is a view of Inglestone common 1981, a great festy that happened after stonehenge in 81 and lasted for over three weeks. This was in the days before the anti convoy hysteria when the locals were friendly and used to buy freaks drinks in the pub and brought their lurchers down to race ours etc.The main venue was the Tibetan Ukranian Mountain Troupe marquee - lots of stuff on them if you can winkle it out !. Put out an APB.

2- Main street on a hot afternoon.
3 - This is a girl called Min (sans pants)

Right - The e-pipe.

Guy Rowe remembers

   Inglestone 8th july 1983 took place on a village green which had trenches dug all round but which someone had filled in sufficiently of a vehicles width so you could get on it, I think there were maybe 20 vans or so on the Friday and we got there through deep fog on the wolds and had to wait for the sun to lift the fog off before we could find the place.

   It got dead hectic on the Saturday, people were parking a way off the field down near the shop which was quite a trek down through the woods, there was a bear in the air who was filming the field who had a knack of rising up from behind the trees and um trying to make like he was out of apocalypse now only with the camera pointing out filming pissing speedheads who’s willies had shrunk to nothing. Can’t remember who was on since with many others was gnashing teeth and furiously carving a piece of wood.

Left: Heavily retouched poster for the 1983 festival courtesy Gopher Wood .

Restored by Great White Shark

• Hyde park Free concerts 67-69

• Camden Festival free concerts 68-69

• Cambridge Midsummer Pop 1969-70

• Beckenham Free Festival 1969

• Aldermaston Peace Festival 1972

• Ashton Court 80-83

• Ashton Court 1974-80

•  Avon Free Festival (IWick Quarry ) 1988

• Bristol Free Festival 1971

• Avon Free Festival (Inglestone common ) 1989-90

• Bath. 1972-73

•  Avebury Free Festival 1981

• Lake Bala Free Festival 1975

• East Berholdt Faire 1981

• Cambridge Free Festival 1971

• Cantlin Stone 1980-90

• Creekmore Free Festival 1978

• Blue Moon Fayre 1982

• Deeply Vale Free Festival 1976-1979

• Green Moon Fayre 1983

• Durham Dome Festival

• Silver Moon Fayre 1984

• Elan Valley 1976

• Cissbury Ring 1980

• Caesar's Camp 1978

• Festival Of Fools Penzance 1980

• Chobham 1977

• Cleeve Common 1985

• Chorley 1976

• Formby Point 1987

• Glastonbury 1970-1978

• Fennit Free Festival 1981

• Gilfach free festival 1979

• Greenham Common 1981-1982

• Guildford free festival 73-75

• Greater London Council Free Festivals 1983

• Harrow Free Concert 1972

• Greater London Council Free Festivals 1984

• Hood Faire 1977

• Greater London Council Free Festivals 1985

• Harlow Free concerts

• Greater London Council Free Festivals 1986

• Harmony Farm Duddeswell 1971

• Heathfield East Sussex . 83?

• Hyde Park free concerts 1970-76

• Inglestone Common 1982

• Meigan Fayre 1973-76.1979

• Llanbister 1991

• Ogwen Valley Fair - 1977

• Keswick East Anglia 1980-81

• Phun City 1970

• Molesworth 1984

• Mayfly 1974-78

• Norwich Peaceful Green Fair 1983

• North Country Fair ( AKA Rivington Pike )-1976

• Norwich Peaceful Green Fair 1986

• Priddy Pool #-1979

• Norwich Free Festival 1987#

• Psilocybin Festival 1979

• Pickup Bank 1980-81

• Rivington Pike Free Festival 1976-78

• Pure Energy Fair 1982 (benefit )

• Rhyader Valley Free Festival 1976

• Ruthin Free Festival 1980

• Seasalter Free Fest 1976

• Cannabis Law Reform Rally 1982

• Severn Vale festival 1979

• Stoneleigh ( Warwickshire)1980

• Stonehenge Free Festival 1972-79

• Stonehenge 1980-85

• University of Surrey Free Festival 1974 #

• Treworgey Tree Fayre 1989

• Trentishoe Whole Earth Fayre 1972-76

• Walcott festival 1981

• Watchfield Free Festival 1975-76

• Psilocybin Festival 1980

• Windsor Peoples Free Festival 1972-74

• Inglestone Common 1989

• Ham Hill Free Festival.Yeovil 1979

• Port Meadow Oxford 1986

• Torpedo Town Free Festival 1985-92

• Ribblehead Free Festival 1987-91

• Tibetan Ukrainian Mountain Troupe

• Brinklow Free Festival 1986

• Dome building kit

• Nostell Priory 1984

• Festival Welfare Service

• Vines Cross Free Festival 1983

• Red Ice Newsletter 1981

• Twmbarlwm Free Festival 1986-87

• Green Deserts Fair 1985?

• Aktivator 1988

• White Horse Festival Uffington ( Beltane ) 1989

• Clyro Court 1988

• Hungerford Common ( Beltane ) 1990

• Clyro Court 1989