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Castlemorton Common Festival

Castlemorton Common Festival
Genre Breakbeat Hardcore, Techno, House, Anarcho Punk
Dates 22nd-26th May 1992
Location(s) Malvern, Worcestershire, England
Years active 1992
Attendance 20,000-40,000

The Castlemorton Common Festival was a week-long free festival and rave held in the Malvern Hills near Malvern, Worcestershire, England between 22–29 May 1992. A great deal of media interest surrounded the festival, and it hosted many of the large sound systems of the time such as Bedlam, Circus Warp, Spiral Tribe and the DiY Sound System. Concerns about the festival and the way in which it was policed inspired the legislation which developed into the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

In May 1992 Avon and Somerset Police tried to end the annual Avon Free Festival, which had been held in the Bristol area around the May Bank Holiday for several years. As a result, thousands of new age travellers and ravers en route to the area for the expected festival were shunted into neighbouring counties by Avon and Somerset’s Operation Nomad police manoeuvres. An estimated 20,000-40,000 people gathered on Castlemorton Common to hold a free party that lasted a full week, the biggest of its kind since the Stonehenge Free Festival in the mid-1980s.

Castlemorton hosted many of the large sound systems of the time such as Bedlam, Circus Warp, Spiral Tribe and the DiY Sound System, and bands such as Back To The Planet, Xenophobia (fronted by Spiral Tribe's MC Skallywag), AOS3 and Poisoned Electrick Head. Big name DJs also attended and the immediate high-profile coverage in the national media only served to swell the crowd further, making it an impossible task for the authorities to close the festival down.


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