Glastonbury Festival

Sir A.J. Michael Eavis (1935-) was born and brought up in Pilton, Somerset, and inherited Worthy Farm, the family’s dairy farm there, when only 19. He and his second wife, then Jean Lord (1939-99), decided to host the ‘Pilton Pop, Folk & Blues Festival’ on their fields in 1970, inspired by attending an outdoor rock concert in Bath the previous year.

Charging £1 per ticket (including free milk!) and attracting 1,500 campers for the 2-day, loss-making experiment, they had no idea that Glastonbury Festival (“Glasto”), as it was re-named, would become the world’s biggest ‘greenfield’ musical extravaganza. The work of the farm continues around it, so there are regular ‘fallow’ years to give the land and village a rest, especially today when Festival capacity is 210,000. In the early years at least, the iconic pyramid stage doubled as a cow-shed!

Glastonbury Tor is on the horizon and Glasto is said to be situated on a Glastonbury ley-line. The Festival, now a 5-day event, has a hippy/New Age/socialist ideology and the current ticket price of £360 helps towards generous donations to local and other charities, e.g. WaterAid. Occasionally, the British weather attempts to cover everyone in mud but this only seems to add to Glasto-ites’ determination to return next time.

(Image: zzuuzz at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)