Ashton Court Festival

Ashton Court Festival
The main stage at Ashton Court Festival.
Genre	music, dance, theatre, crafts
Dates	14 & 15 July 2007
Location(s)	Ashton Court, Bristol, England
Years active	1974–2007
Website
www.ashtoncourtfestival.com/ (archived)

The Ashton Court Festival was an outdoor music festival held annually in mid-July on the grounds of Ashton Court, just outside Bristol, England. The festival was a weekend event which featured a variety of local bands and national headliners. Mainly aimed at local residents, the festival did not have overnight camping facilities and was financed by donations and benefit gigs.

Starting as a small one-day festival in 1974, the festival grew during succeeding years and was said to be Britain's largest free festival until changes brought on by government legislation resulted in compulsory fees and security fencing being introduced. After problems were caused by a temporary move to Hengrove Park in 2001, due to the foot and mouth crisis, and a washout in 2007, the organisers declared bankruptcy in 2007.

The first festival was held in 1974, organised by Royce Creasey and friends, as a small event, for the local musicians to entertain the local community. The first festival took place over four successive weekends with bands playing from a stage improvised from a flat bed truck. Bristol City Council donated £50. The following year the festival took place over one weekend and was located near to Ashton Court mansion. After this, new organisers came on board and fund-raising gigs were held enabling the event to grow steadily through the 1970s.

In 1980, large numbers of people from far afield attended, trees were damaged and burnt and there was illegal camping and lurid press reports of drugs and nudity. It was not until 1983 that the festival recommenced. when it was a one-day event; in 1984 a de facto two-day event was created by staging it back-to-back with a one-day WOMAD event. The festival took place in a large sloped clearing surrounded on three sides by New Barn Wood and Clarken Coombe. The main stage was placed at the bottom of the slope and the second stage in a natural amphitheatre near the entrance to the clearing. There were many other performance spaces, varying from year to year, including a dance tent, marquees for world music, acoustic acts and performing arts, and the "Blackout" tent for experimental music and video, as well as a children's area and funfair rides. Camping on the festival site was not allowed.