Thanks to Steve’s comment (scroll down) we now know that Spirals didn’t have a rig at the time, but Bedlam and Circus Lunatek provided theirs.

Here is a link to a graudian article that features a couple of beautiful black and white images from this event.

The flyer just above (front and back) is a postcard, rather sturdier than the floppy photocopies I’d picked up for Spiral raves before. That’s because they now had a record deal with Big Life and were  due to launch the Sirius 23 EP three days after this party. Apparently the money from the deal was invested wisely (for at least one event it was spent on renting a ‘sacrificial’ soundsystem).

Here’s yet another report from Amino Clang, who’s now overtaken yours truly in terms of the amount of memories he’s contributed to the site Thanks again old friend. And for anyone else who’s got anything to contribute, please feel free, I’ll publish pretty much everything you write (as long as it’s about free parties from 91-94 in the UK)…

Not long after the New Year’s party in Uxbridge, there was another party in the same area billed as “Spiral Tribe’s last party in the UK”. It was to happen on Easter weekend and it was going to be a killer party.It was – this party had a profound effect on my being, my psyche, my understanding of raves and of Spiral Tribe. Allow me to elaborate…

When we found this party it was fuckin’ massive (I think there were three big rooms with three big sound systems, lots of freaky projections, lights, backdrops etc and shit-loads of ravers. The main room had two HUGE pyramids of speakers covered up with camo netting and banging it out at full tilt from the minute we got there until the minute we left (and then some).

This party was particularly interesting for me because I had two groups of raver mates – one group from Dorset (where my Dad lives) and another group from Wales (where I grew up and lived with my Mum) – but there were members of both groups of friends at this party. One of my mates from Wales gave me some free acid (always the best kind!) and as I was starting to come up a group of my mates from Dorset bumped into me (quite literally because of the “Super-K” they had all just done). One of them was lying on the floor in a bit of a pickle and because I was the only one who was not Ketamized, he was left with me. I got him to lie down a bit more comfortably and put his head on my lap and in an attempt to keep him calm I gave him a gentle head massage.

After a while I started to get a bit worried, but I was happy that he was still breathing so I asked somebody if they knew how long Ketamine lasts. They didn’t, so I went back to my mate lying on the floor. After another minute or so he woke up and asked where he was and what was going on so I tried to explain but by now I was starting trip a bit harder so I think I just said something really useful like “Spirals innit! You’re in a warehouse, a party, just look – it’s wicked innit!”.

Luckily I saw one of my friends from Wales who knew a little bit about K and he just got my spannered mate to stand up and walk out of the warehouse. After a few more minutes he properly came round and said that he had a full-on re-birth experience, took some more drugs and bounced off back into the party with a big fat smile on his face.

That’s when things start to get a bit hazy so let me bullet point some key points from the morning…

1. I remember doing some juggling, but becoming totally distracted by another guy who was doing some amazing juggling (I was also a pretty good juggler and I was well impressed by his mad skills).

2. I remember walking into the main room and feeling something tugging at my trousers – it was a stranger who recognised me from the NYE Party in Uxbridge only a few months earlier. I sat with him for a minute as we exchanged disjointed bullshit about “Spirals in Uxbridge again eh! Two great parties in a row, still fuckin’ avinnit” etc.

3. I remember sitting at the back of the main room quite late in the morning watching the basslines wash over the room and crash up against me as Spiral Tribe Sound System started a live set. At least I think this is what was happening – I remember seeing them set up loads of keyboards and drum machines and asking another mate (the one who gave me the acid, who later went off around Europe with the Spirals and took his brother with him) what they were up to but he was no wiser than me. It all looked very serious though.

4. I remember sitting at the back of the room watching the party go on, watching the people fall over, feeling the bass and I got to thinking (just like most Spiral Tribers have at some point I’m sure) that there must be more to these events. It could be political, it could be religious. They could be some sort of cult or some sort of terrorists. It was a bit worrying really but I will come back to this a little later (at the first party in Nantyr Picnic Area), but for now I think it is enough to say that I became convinced that there was something significant happening here and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

5. I remember sitting in a car later again in the morning and watching a group of coppers turn up (I decided to sit a bit further down in the car). I saw the gates to the warehouse being closed and I saw a crusty hippy type with more dreds than brain cells left (not meant to be an insult, just an observation) being dragged off by the coppers and I remember feeling so sorry for that poor bloke. He looked like he was having a lovely time until those fucks dragged him off to (no doubt) take a beating and spend his comedown in a cell in police custody.

Eventually the friends who I came with (the K-hole surfer from Dorset) said they were ready to leave and the driver was straight enough to drive. I was not convinced (I certainly wasn’t straight enough!), but he seemed quite determined and so off we went.

This was the first time I realised that my friends from Wales actually already knew some of my friends from Dorset and that they had met up totally independently of me, but totally dependent on Spiral Tribe (the network grows stronger). In fact the links run much deeper, but I won’t get into that here.

Epilogue: Nantyr Picnic area spring ‘93

I have put this party alongside the Spiral parties in Uxbridge because they really blend into each other in my mind.

Nantyr Picnic Area is a beautiful spot where we used to put on parties up in the hills of North Wales and it will always have a special place in my heart because of this party (and lots of others). This was the first party that I went to that had been organised by my friends and I probably knew everybody there. In fact, it was the first party that I took my Mum to, there were lots of the same people who were at the last Spiral party in Uxbridge and although I’m not going to go into all the details of this party here believe me when I say that it was a significant turning point for me.

During the proceedings I had an epiphany moment. While at the last Spiral Party in Uxbridge I was starting to become convinced that there was something more to these parties, at this party I came to the firm conclusion that actually, people just love to meet up with their friends, get fucked and have a dance. People have done it for thousands of years and they will always have a need to do it. It doesn’t need to be a political statement (but it has been), it doesn’t need to be a religious experience (but it has been), it doesn’t even need to be anything else or anything more special than just a party with people getting wasted and dancing with their friends under the stars. What could be more natural than that?

This is Tim’s account of the party, which used to be on the truly brilliant but now vanished Loft Sites:

Sitting around on one of the many collapsing couches at 227 beneath the huge wall hangings of characters from the Magic Roundabout, me, Jamie and Russ spent ages ringing round trying to find a party within a reasonable distance. Everyone else had gone out so we were left to our own devices. As it got later and later -or earlier and earlier- and our hash supply began to dwindle to dangerous levels, we decided the only option was to go to a Spiral do in the depths of the Brecan Beacons in Mid Wales. We had a long way to go so lots of speed was greedily consumed before we left.

The roads were completely clear in the growing light and we found our way relatively easily – when we got to Rhyader there was a smiley acid face taped to a monument in the town centre with an arrow pointing which way to go. From this point on we left civilisation behind as we followed a long road winding its way along a river valley through the most beautiful scenery. Rounded mountains rose up on either side and were mirrored in glassy rivers and lakes. This was all most unexpected and gave our speedy mouths and brains something else to babble about.

After a good few miles the road sort of came upon the party, which was on a disused quarry built into the edge of a stony hill, no more than a hundred or so yards from the road. The extreme isolated location ensured this wasn’t a problem. We immediately bumped into Mitch, Sarah, her brother and her mates. This was quite easy as only about 200 people had made it there.

There were several people that I had become quite friendly with due to seeing them at these free raves every weekend. One of them was a very laid back friendly bloke from London, who had long hair tied back loosely in a ponytail. Although he only ever took acid himself, he always had a bag of E’s on him and they were always good. I cannot for the life of me remember his name, so shall refer to him as, imaginatively, long-haired-e-dealer. Anyway, sure enough he was there again and after a brief chat he sorted me, Russ and Jamie out with some red and blacks, though as usual I had bought a stash of my own.

Due to all the amphetamine I had already ingested the E’s got to work pretty quickly. Had a most excellent time wondering up and down the rocky hill slope, meeting and greeting similarly cained party people. Jamie discovered a stream he made us drink out of. We lay on the summit in the strengthening morning sun, looking down to the river in the valley floor where some ravers had made their way. As my gaze settled on the hill slope opposite, the perspective of the whole scene suddenly flattened out. I became unable to comprehend distance. The once familiar shapes of rocks, people, clouds and trees became abstract components of an intricate, fluid psychedelic pattern, slowly moving and changing as I watched. It was as if I was looking at a huge screen, which I could reach out and touch any part of.

Gradually I let my mind begin to make proper sense of the scene in front of me, while I wilfully let my whole self become enveloped by the chemical charm snaking through my body.

In these states it was impossible to rationalise space and time. An unhealthy dose of early 90’s party drugs often induced feelings that so overwhelmed the senses that to be concerned with anything but the very immediate present was all but impossible. You became immersed in a warm, fizzing bubble that floated around, bumping into things then drifting off with no discernable impact.

Russ, also completely wankered, asked me to help him score some hash. We found a dealer near the road where the cars were parked. Russ passed me the gear to examine to see if it was a good deal, although I was really much too gone to make any realistic judgement. I looked at the hash carefully before it was pointed out to me I was yards away from a couple of cars driven slowly by bemused welshmen, maybe I should be a little more discreet. At some point a few policemen turned up, with no idea how to deal with such a situation. So they did the sensible thing and left us to it.

The floor of the old quarry provided an excellent dance floor- a large concrete square flanked on three sides by equally bleak walls. There was no roof, and the whole thing appeared to have been sunk into the side of the hill, the open side looking towards the valley and the hill opposite. The DJ was on the top of the back wall, facing towards the dance floor and the valley below.

There were not many people dancing by the time we arrived. Most people were beginning to come down and chill out around the edge of the building, or wander up and down the mountain. However I was coming up in leaps and bounds and spent some time dancing with the still-mashed posse. I believe this was the first time I heard Gat Decor’s Passion, it’s deep bubbling bass and euphoric but slightly eerie sounds providing a perfect soundtrack, bouncing off the mountains and filling the valley and the new world around us.

Sarah’s brother, who was new to raving, was amused by my manic rushing around and eternal grin. As he was leaving he gave me his Vicks stick, telling me I could keep it as I seemed to be enjoying it so much. Believing another life long friendship had been kindled, I thanked him profusely. Vicks sticks had become an essential rave accessory. These three inch long white tubes filled with a piercing minty aroma were originally intended as a decongestant. We had discovered that if inhaled while on E the intensely cool vapour caused spine tingling body rushes, like an electrical charge shivering luxuriously through your muscles. So it was not uncommon to see a party head with what looked like a tampon shoved up his nose.

The day got older and people left, leaving the hardcore spiral followers, the seriously out of it and the Spirals themselves. Eventually I drove back, the journey taking around 4 hours. Russ and Jamie crashed out almost as soon as we began, and didn’t even wake up when I had to do an emergency stop, fling my door open and puke onto the road. It was well past nightfall by the time I reached home.

This pic, which appeared in Select magazine, was taken at Rhayader:

Here’s an extract from Simon M‘s rave diaries:

And here’s a party report from an anonymous contributor. Thanks, whoever you are!

It was a beautiful location, but there was 12 hours of driving and loads of calls to the hotline before we even had proper directions, let alone arrived! We were listening to Levitation, The Cardiacs and Butthole Surfers to keep us awake. Out of the darkness on a Welsh mountain road in the arse end of the arse end of nowhere a shape loomed towards us, and the driver braked sharply. It was just a paralytic local on his way back from a pub spilling off his antiquated bicycle and headfirst onto the tarmac. We were worried, and asked if he was OK. He clambered back on, grunted, and cycled off into the gloom.

Eventually we had to give up, and had a couple of hours of very uncomfortable sleep in a layby in the car (3 of us in a mini metro, a gearstick poking me in the ribs).

In the morning we were aching, but the weather was beautiful and we’d already decided that if we couldn’t find the party we’d take our pills and go for a walk. We finally got proper directions at 7 am or thereabouts. After driving through some deep valleys carpeted with thick forests, we stopped the car for my friend to get out for a pee. Two minutes later she came rushing back -‘I can hear it! I can hear it!’, after hours of uncertainty and confusion we arrived at the party at 8 or 9 am. A seemingly purpose-built dancefloor (actually a ruined building- part of a disused leadmine) on the side of a slate mountain with a waterfall over to the right. There was a river running past, parallel to the road that ran through the valley.

When we arrived we realised we needed something for ‘breakfast’. We started with Love Hearts and followed these up with some Special K.

Tired after the journey we spent a stupid amount of time in the car. This often happened back then, you’d travelled MILES with your friends to be in this special place and then, fuck it, let’s just stay in our mobile chill out room.

We were listening to Special K (an old house tape) in the car, and I remember attracting one or two curious stares because of this. Even then, things were quite polarised- you liked house OR techno. We liked both, which confused people.

A pair of girls knocked on the car window. They were tripping enormously and pointing to a piece of sheet music and gibbering at us through the window.

Sometimes, in certain states of mind, time seems to fuck up and start looping. At one stage there were about 5 of us sat in this tiny mini metro, so fucked that all we could do was sigh. This was all that could be heard for a while: ‘Ffffffffffff. Pshhhhhhhh. Phoooooooo! Ffffffffffff. Pshhhhhhhh. Phoooooooo!’
This was what passed for conversation in the old days. Then there was a new sound ‘Ffffffffffff. Pshhhhhhhh. Phoooooooo! Fwap. OW! Ffffffffffff. Pshhhhhhhh. Phoooooooo! Fwap. OW!’ The girl sat in the middle of the back seat was brushing her hair. Every time she brushed it, the brush twatted her neighbour in the head. It was a while before she realised and stopped.

We spent some time chilling out in/by the river.While we were sitting relaxing by the river, my mate, our driver for the weekend, heard the start of Aphex Twin’s ‘Didgeridoo’ and, without warning, sprinted back to the sound system.

Then, and this was something to do with the K, I had a very strong urge to climb the mountain (or at least get to the waterfall). I could feel, and this sounds weird, I’m sure, an invisible thread pulling me upwards. The mountainside was covered in loose slate and so it would have been a bit hairy even if you were straight. God knows how I managed it, but I reached the height of the waterfall. However, I’d gone slightly off course and the waterfall was now too far away for me to reach. I looked down. Mistake. I realised that if I wanted to get through this in one piece I would have to continue going upwards. I reached the top and noticed a gentler slope to take me back to where the party was. On my way down I walked into a field full of sheep. I could see a farmer in a Range Rover in a field below me, and I didn’t want him to see me so I sat on the ground and kept still for a couple of minutes. That was when I realised that the field I was sitting on was covered in clover and there seemed to be millions of bees everywhere. I carried on staying very still for quite some time. The farmer had left and the bees weren’t attacking me so I carried on down the slope. I reached the main road and had to walk a little way back to the party. I passed a lone Welsh country copper and gave him a cheery ‘hello’. Arriving back at the party I saw my friends, who had last seen me disappear up a mountain a couple of hours previously. They’d been worried, and I was oblivious to this.

On the way home one of the fluffed up casualties co-piloting the car insisted the vehicle be stopped and they be let out immediately so they could leap into a field and hug a lamb. I think the lamb ran away.

Here’s Tim’s take on this legendary party:

It seems kind of fitting that the last free rave I ever went to was on December the 31st 1992, the last day of a year filled with unique and amazing experiences. This final party also probably had the happiest, friendliest vibe of them all. But most importantly for me, was the music. I always really listened to the tunes while I danced at these parties; music was and always will be one of my biggest passions. There were times though, when admittedly it just became a soundtrack to a drug fuelled adventure in the countryside. But on this night however, the music was just so god damned good that it commanded my attention and at some points I could do little more than laugh with glee. Shortly after, I made it my mission to find tapes of the event, and track them down I did. I still have all eight of them – which pretty much spans the whole party. And they still sound fucking great.

The weather on this New Years Eve was particularly dire. Thick, freezing fog lay in menacing stretches making driving conditions treacherous. But word was that DiY were putting on a party down near bath, and I could still clearly remember the good times me and Stuart had at their do in Plumpton. So me, Stuart, my sister Liz and her boyfriend Paul spent some considerable time umming and ahhing as to what to do, after all we already had some E’s so maybe we should just get mashed up and hang around with our mates in Witney town. Naah, fuck that we concluded, and piled into Stuart’s mums car. (I’m pretty sure she knew we had it!)

The journey was indeed highly unenjoyable, Stuart jerking to a near stop every time a dense blanket of fog suddenly enveloped us. Several times we nearly turned back, until we got beyond halfway and knew we had to keep going, despite the fact that half the time we could barely even see the road below us. We followed to A46 to Bath, then turned left on to the A420, and then thank God there was the White Hart pub, the final part of the directions I had scribbled down earlier on. Two hundred yards beyond this, apparently, was the party.

So we parked up in a nearby field (apparently DiY had already pre arranged this with the farmer who owned it) and bowled into the pub, as it was still pretty early. The place was packed, and taking a brief look around at the Fila trainers and Destroy t-shirts it was pretty clear that 90% of them were popping pills with those bottles of Becks, slowly gearing up before the party started. The few locals were probably more than a little surprised to see their quiet country establishment crammed to the rafters with trendy young folk.

There was an infectious air of anticipation and excitement, so we swallowed down our E’s; this week they were Shamrocks, the latest shit hot ones to hit the streets. Before long the word came that the party had just kicked off. We followed the rest of the crowd the short distance down the lane, passed the parked cars, and right there in the adjoining field was a large, white marquee, a sight that by now had come to symbolize the free rave scene.

It was still only about 11.30, half an hour to go before the big clichéd 12 o’clock thing. But then the music started.

Since my last outing with DiY I had been becoming progressively interested in the more laid back four by four house sound. However I was still very much under the manic influence of breakbeat rave and hard, tribal techno; with labels such as Moving Shadow, Production House, and Rising High being my muse. But when that deep, chunky beat kicked in, when that dubby, bouncing bassline shook the floor, and when those spacey, tripped out, soulful atmospherics and vocal hooks washed over me, I knew my heart was lost.

While Spiral Tribe took you on an exhilarating, adrenalin fuelled journey; DiY’s DJ’s – Jack, Ian, DK, Cookie, Digs and Woosh (the best named DJ’s in the business) and all the rest – simply made you wanna smile and dance your skinny ass off. The music was still just as underground, innovative and out there, but the whole attitude was less hardcore u know the score, and more kick back, chill out and get funked up. However, they still partied just as hard as any of their contempories.

At midnight the music stopped for a few brief moments, and with a simple “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 1993!” the party really began.

The marquee was as packed as the pub had been. This was partly due to the freezing winter air outside, but there is no doubt that the tantalizing; mouth-watering beat was as irresistible to everyone else as it was to me. As the familiar waves of nausea announced my impending E, I looked around at the bobbing crowd and saw a sea of smiles reflecting mine back.

Although coming up on E was usually quite an unsubtle affair, both physically and mentally, there was still a moment of surprise when you suddenly realized that everything was now wonderfully different. Music sounded incredible. Everyone looked like a potential best friend. And dancing became so easy and natural that it was hard to stop. And boy, was this music easy to dance to. The floor of the tent had been thoughtfully covered with some form of wooden decking, and this provided an excellent springy surface on which we collectively got off our heads and grooved into the night.

The party goers seemed a little less grungy than the usual Spiral crowd I was so used to. A few more logos, the odd pair of Kickers mixed with the obligatory trainers, little or no combat gear. Everyone, in fact, looked fucking great, or so it appeared. I spent some time dancing next to a very perky looking traveler girl, who had multi-coloured, striped knee length socks and short funky dreads. There was one particular track, with an awesome hook and incessant bassline, which seemed to be just never ending, it bounced on and on sounding better with every beat. I shared this thought with her and she laughed and agreed. When, seemingly ages later, I caught her eye again and the track was still playing we just pissed ourselves laughing. It was a fucking good track though, but I never found it on the tapes!.

My sister and I took a wonder outside to get some fresh air, and some fresh drugs. We had become quite used to partying together since meeting up at Castlemorton. Actually I still had a couple of E’s left, but I selfishly kept them to myself (I was not a very sharing person when it came to drugs) so I helped Liz search out some speed. Of course by now everyone had heated up nicely, there were quite a few people sitting on the damp ground, oblivious of the freezing temperatures while they slapped a few rizlas together. I made it my duty to mention to everyone (and I mean everyone) how good I thought the music was, and was met with universal agreement, and the odd toke on a spliff -cheers, thanks!

I spied a skinny white guy with long blond dreads down to his waist – Moffball! He was one of the DiY crew I had met at their last party, so I rushed over to say hi how you doing do you have any drugs? He seemed to remember me – I was the one with the insane, perpetual grin – and we chatted for a bit before he introduced us to one of his equally friendly traveler buddies who apparently had some rather nice speed.

I’m not entirely sure what it was, but the wrap of bright yellow powder was soon in Liz’s belly and from that point on lighting cigarettes became increasingly difficult, until I had to take over this delicate operation for her. The rocket fuel searing round her little body also made coherent speech a challenge, but she none the less appeared to be having an excellent time so I polished off my E’s and joined her in marveling at the electric blue sparks that were now appearing like daises in the grass. We had several incredibly meaningful though profoundly illogical conversations with similarly mashed party heads, including one terrifying looking traveler with tattoos, piercings and long black hair who turned out to be the sweetest bloke you could wish to meet.The lure of the music eventually drew us back under the cover of the marquee and we continued to boogie away on the wooden boards, which were becoming decidedly wonky as the night progressed. Hearing Hardfloor’s Hardtrance Acperience was a memorable highlight – layers of 303’s building and building, keeping you hanging on for the break until the very last, orgasmic moment.

The MC reminded us that Fantazia was having an expensive do a few miles up the road, and I was only too pleased to drop a few pound coins into the donation bucket that was being passed around. Jack, DiY’s bext known DJ, was playing at Fantazia much to the amused scorn of the rest of his posse. He did, however, eventually manage to escape and played us the final set of the night.

As a cold grey dawn slowly began to break, Stuart, Liz and I went outside to inspect the surroundings in the new light. Everywhere was still shrouded in the thick fog that had made our drive down so pleasant. However, now it looked totally brilliant. To our chemically tinged eyes the mist had a translucent, surreal quality to it, blues and greys blending in to more vivid pinks, greens and purples. We stopped and stared, becoming aware of a number of other ravers in a similar state of awe.

And then there was that thing, that tree. It appeared to be hovering about a mile above the ground. I ‘assume that it was a very tall tree, its bottom half completely hidden by the fog. But at the time, we just couldn’t get our heads round it. “Hey mate, what the fuck’s that thing up there?” I asked some guy next to me.” Shit, ” he replied, “that’s fucking weird “. Several others became interested, and we all had a great time bonding over stupid explanations of UFO’s and more ciggies and spliffs.

A watery sun did manage to break it’s way through and gradually burn away the final wisps of fog. The party began to thin out a little and, despite still being immensely fucked, we said farewell to DiY and to an awesome, intense year that can never be repeated. Although the weather was by now totally clear, the drive home was very similar to the one down. Stuart continued to frequently slam on his breaks, only this time it was due to imaginary objects that kept appearing in his path. I’m not sure what we did when we got back, but I remember sitting in the pub that evening, our heads and feet still involuntarily bobbing to the beats on the jukebox. It would take a while for that night, for that year to leave our minds.

Here is an article about the party from an unknown newspaper:

Neighbours outraged as 1,500 descend on farm

Fury over rave party

By Sally Pook

MORE than 1,500 people descended on a farm near Bath for a New Year’s Eve party.

Police were not warned about the rave party, at a farm on the A420 between Marshfield and Cold Ashton, and were unable to stop it going ahead. 

Nearby residents said they were furious because it kept them up all night. 

Mrs Clarissa Mallett, of Oldfield Farm cottages, said: “It wrecked our New Year. My husband Richard was poorly because he was in : car accident the day before. He couldn’t sleep and neither could the children.

“There was a constant droning. We were going to have a few drinks to celebrate the New Year but we didn’t in the end. It was totally inconsiderate.”

The party started at 9.30pm and finished at 1pm the next day. People from all over the country attended.

Farmer Alan Tizzard, of Folly Farm, next door to the rave site, said he was furious after revellers tore down his fencing and urinated on his land.

He said: “They broke down all the fences and walls around the field. And there were no toilet facilities at all. They were using my land as a toilet.

“I had to be up at 5.30am but I was up all night because of it. I got about two hours sleep.’

But Mr Dave Lang, who allowed his land at Folly End to be used for the party, said it was a good event and everyone had a good time.

He said: “There was no aggravation, no fighting, no booze, nothing. It was a private party and all the kids had a great time.

“I enjoyed it and I am 40. People who complain about it ought to come and see it.”

He said there was no entrance fee to the party.

Sergeant Dave Welsman of Avon and Somerset police said it was not clear whether the party was legal or not.

He said: “We were in attendance to monitor the situation because there was certainly a large number of people there.

“We did not have great advance notification of it. We heard about it a very short while after it had been set up.

“People came from a wide area and there is no doubt that information has been passed far afield about it but how that information was passed we do not know.”

Sgt Weisman said the party had been well-organised and there were no arrests.

He said: “There were reports of people urinating on people’s land but there were no serious disorder situations and no arrests.

“It caused some problems with residents. We had a lot of people telephoning our switchboard.”

There were serious traffic problems along the A420 at one point in the night because of the amount of cars travelling to the site.

Mrs Mallett said: “I am furious. They may have had a happy New Year but we haven’t.”

We previously listed the wrong place name, see the title ^ for the real name of the location

Some memories from the unstoppable Simon M:

Drove up with P, T and M from Winterbourne Abbas. I can’t remember who T is now, but I do remember he was drinking a can of Special Brew whilst driving us towards Bath.

Got there when it was dark. Big white marquee, a few thousand people, party in full swing, vehicles parked all around. Fog. Great music – deep house and acid. Really cold, unless you got right in the middle of the party and then is was so hot people had their tops off.

Must have lost everyone else because according to my diary I spent most of the night on my own, but I had a great time. Had a Splitzer and danced all night. Sat in a car having a smoke with some guy who told the most incredible stories – can’t remember any of them now. Much older crowd, had the sense that a lot of the people here were veteran ravers, lots of long dreads.

At about 3am the music went quite acid techno. There was a traveller doing the most amazing elastic robotic dancing to the squelchy sounds. I also remember seeing a large Asian guy, top off, doing a dance like he was cleaning windows, wax on, wax off! I don’t remember much of a fuss being made about midnight, the party just kept rocking.

Lots of people on this website saying there weren’t any E’s at the party. Most people must have brought their own because the party was full of E’d up good vibes.

Here are newer uploads of the DK tape, enjoy! Thanks to Jerry for pointing out our broken links By the way, if anyone sees any other broken links (I’m sure there are others!) just leave a comment and we’ll try to replace them with current ones

Recordings from the rest of the night can be found on this page:

http://www.oldskoolanthemz.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129737

Incidentally, this party belongs to the long list of great parties I never made it to. Some of my friends went and had a whale of a time. Anyway, here’s Mark’s account of the night:

New Years Eve daytime having a smoke at Holmer’s house with Mr Wyer and one other(?) plans were made to head for the party that night Bath way. I called two other mates, Woody and Spence, and the mission was on. So, after waiting for Woodie to finish his washing up shift at the Jade restaurant we set off just after 11pm in Spencer’s white 405.

Before long we were hammering down the m5 and come 12pm the obligatory champagne made its appearance. After a quick refuel, we set off again reaching the party around 2am(?). Anyone who was out that night will remember it was absolutely freezing! The party though was in full swing and I remember being impressed by the t-shirted and sweaty bodies inside the marquee compared to the freezing people outside.

We soon realised that there werent any E’s on site – or so we were told and decided to plump for some hash and acid instead. This we did, scoring off a nice little ice cream van parked nearby. The night passed in acid, champagne and slate confusion and the rising sun showed the whole area to be wreathed in fog which was confusing many people by the looks of it. We made the brave decision to go and try and dance so after Spencer’s neatky executed 3 point turn and a close encounter with a large hairy pig we were inside the tent. All I remember is dancing with a insane grin on what appeared to be a 45 degree slope. Anyway, a good time was had by all

Dan’s shared a couple of pages of his rave diary with us, take it away Dan! And thank you!

The bust is apparently where Paul Massey took his iconic photo of policemen carrying off loudspeakers and amps. It features on the back cover and label of a recent Ragga Twins compilation, and was apparently used in an Advance Party leaflet too.

Dreaming in Yellow has the September 1st party as Earth Magyck but the flyer we’ve seen has Ley Line Lunatics printed on the front.

The People From Pepperbox joined forces with DiY’s DJs for this, the fourth and final Pepperbox Hill party.

The following quote is from the brilliant Dreaming in Yellow, reviewed here.

Drawn by Simon’s tales [about Total Recall, the previous party at Pepperbox Hill], we all headed down in separate cars to the next Pepperbox party, named Earth Magyck, the following weekend, Saturday 1 September 1990. Rick, Pete, Barbara and I went via another big Raindance event, the last big pay party we would attend as punters. It had proved enjoyable but would be nothing compared to the free event, which we drove fast through the night to reach. With the car parked, we walked up to the party site, neckingthe tablets we had brought with us. In the darkness, we could hear the muffled bass kick, which will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever searched for a free party in the dark night.

As we entered the circle of several hundred dancers loosely gathered around the decks, it became apparent just what a diverse group this was. In the shadows, some travellers’ vehicles were parked up, people climbing in and out of these crazily painted and eccentric machines. There was one strip of lights behind the DJ table, splashing vivid blocks of colour across the trees and occasionally highlighting the old monument itself. Jack was playing, locking the dancers further into the groove as Simon, backed by his guardian Damian, was going through his records; obviously, he would be playing some soon. And as the ecstasy kicked in, the whole scene reminded me of something imagined from the sixties, a communal ritual under the stars, a congregation free to dance, to talk, to wander off. Freedom made reality. All the wild freedom so promised by early acid house and now so absent from events like the one we had just driven from.

I wondered who had organised such a breathtakingly magical yet brazenly illicit event. In the dawn, as Simon took to his own decks (previously they had been using standard belt-drive turntables) for what would turn into a marathon set in the Wiltshire sunshine, we would find out. Chilly Phil was there, plus several of his travelling companions we had met at Glastonbury: Boysie, Emma, Roger, Gav. Other travellers we didn’t know had come over from the nearby site, plus some from Stroud, including a chirpy young chap whose name seemed to be Moffball. A contingent from Bournemouth were dancing
together, including Justin and Nige, who DJed together as North and South (one being from Manchester, the other local), Mark Darby, who would later set up Mighty Force Records in Exeter, Hammy, and some other townies.

Then there was a group of Scousers, identifiable by their tracksuits, a group of whom had moved to the south coast of Hampshire to ‘graft’. Clearly, the leader of this contingent was a square-jawed bloke resplendent in a gold jumpsuit and headband who would be introduced to us as Rory. Completing the eclectic gathering were the local Salisbury crowd, particularly their main organisers, two seemingly inseparable young men named Oli and Eric. Together they had arranged these parties, and although they were communal affairs where you brought what you could contribute, these two had sorted out the business end: decks, mixer, lights and, most importantly, the sound system. The generator had probably come from the travellers, as they needed them for their way of life. Ingeniously, Oli and Eric had started a club event in the back of a Salisbury pub called the Barron of Beef, ostensibly hiring a PA for this licensed venue but then taking it up to Pepperbox at the end and returning it to the pub before the owners came to pick it up.

As the sun climbed slowly into the sky, Simon would continue to play for hours. He had a different set of records to the other local DJs, as we had musically come of age immersed in the northern club scene. Additionally, he was being supplied with quality American imports, which probably didn’t make it down to the south-west. Either way, from the start, he acquired a legendary status that would never leave him. As the party continued past 9am, visitors arrived at the popular beauty spot and, inevitably, the police were not far behind. Initially fairly friendly, their attitude hardened as we all collectively ignored their requests.

Witnessing this ongoing game of cat-and-mouse negotiation, as support for our comrade we stood behind Simon on the decks. Demanding to know who the organisers were, a question with which we would become wearily familiar, they understandably honed in on Simon, the only person actively doing anything. Excuses were mumbled, ignorance claimed. Simon eventually gave them his real name, which raised a few eyebrows and was to have drastic consequences further down the line. There came that moment when it was time for the party to end, when the realisation strikes that the police really have had enough and arrests will soon follow. Speakers were loaded into vehicles, decks placed in the boots of cars, people tidied up.

As I recall, most people had left as we drove out on the A36, leaving only the travellers’ vehicles bringing up the rear, and as Phil’s bus pulled out into the road, two police vehicles blocked his way. This would be the first of many, many encounters with the forces of authority around a free party, and as the police entered Phil’s vehicle, the feeling of helpless agitation was overwhelming. After an agonisingly long wait, they emerged and drove off, leaving a relieved looking man to drive his bus back to site. Despite the police actions and the realisation that the location was no longer a viable party site, we set off back to Nottingham, elated and reverential over what we had experienced. During the emotional intensity of that party, alliances had been formed and friendships made that would have enormous repercussions for all of us present. Inspired, we wanted to do this again, and soon. We wouldn’t have to wait very long.

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.104-107.

What else do you know? Memories, however scattered, are welcome here, just have a waffle in the comments If you want to send us images or have more to say, then email us: freepartypeople (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk .

We have seen a flyer, do let us know if you have a photo of it as we would love to include it here!

Overall, we know very little about these parties. NB Here is the page for the first one which took place at the start of August one, the second one, the August Bank Holiday one (Total Recall), and the party on the airfield at Barton Stacey.

Rick [Digs], Pete [Woosh] and I didn’t go to but the party certainly lived up to its claims, Simon [DK] heading down with [DJs] Jack and Damian, then returning to Nottingham to rant for days about this incredible party that went on all morning and where he and Jack had played for hours and met loads of amazing people. A party with no entry fee, no security, no fences, not even a a tent or marquee covering the decks. By this stage, we were veterans of house parties and raves, veterans of free festivals too, but it had not really occurred to us to combine these two concepts into what would become known simply as ‘free parties’. Like all great ideas, it would seem obvious with hindsight.

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.104.

This was the third People From Pepperbox party at this location. The first one is here, the second one is here, and the last one, Ley Line Lunatics is here. Their party at Barton Stacey is here.

This is what it said on the flyer. If anyone has a photo of the flyer we would love to upload it!

THE FOOLS ON THE HILL

GIVE YOU

TOTAL RECALL

AN ALL-NIGHT CELEBRATION OF LIGHT, SOUND & DANCE

SAT 25TH AUGUST

AT PEPPERBOX HILL
NEAR SALISBURY

FREE-FREE-FREE

1 K of SOUND

VISUALS

STROBES

DRINKS

DJs from Inner Temple & Guests

If you have any memories do please give us a shout in the comments. If you have longer bits of writing, photos or videos you want to send us about this party the best way to do that is by emailing us at freepartypeople (at) wordpress (dot) co (dot) uk.

Some members of the DiY collective first encountered a violent police crackdown on a party during one of their many excursions down south. The following quote is from Harry Harrison’s Dreaming in Yellow (reviewed here).

Soon after this remarkably benign brush with the law [Rhythm Collision II], events in our parallel lives down south would prove to be far less fortuitous. As our closest associates on the traveller scene had now moved to Nottingham, they would be the point of contact for the free party heartlands. God knows how they, or we, or anyone for that matter, ever found the isolated rural locations where parties were beginning to spring up, but somehow we got there in the end. Although veterans of police violence on the streets and demonstrations of the past, our first realisation that the authorities were prepared to use tactics employed against the miners and the travellers at the Battle of the Beanfield to stop a party came in that autumn of 1990.

DiY were starting to make inroads into the southern club scene at this point; within a year, Simon and Jack would become massively in demand. Following a club night somewhere in the south-west, we headed in yet another 3am convoy to a party near a place called Bloxworth in Dorset. I can’t recall who organised the party, DJs North and South strikes a chord, but it was a well-organised affair, certainly in comparison to those earlier parties at Pepperbox and Barton Stacey. A proper sound system, no apparent neighbours, all inside a marquee, hundreds of people partying in a really euphoric atmosphere at four o’ clock in the morning. Some kind of heaven.

Then, unbelievably, dozens of kitted-up riot police arrived from nowhere. We watched in mounting horror as they formed a line behind the decks at one end of the tent, turned the music off and walked slowly forward, hitting their shields, pushing and striking partygoers randomly. In seeming slow-motion, they shoved riot sticks through speaker cones, battered the DJ, yanked out cables and threw the decks onto the floor. Hundreds of panicking ravers spilt out of the other end of the marquee, walking and then running away, many onto the nearby road. Having emptied the tent and trashed the equipment, the police then emerged and, in a running battle, began hitting people indiscriminately. A gang of four or five young girls had climbed onto the roof of a car, and I will never forget the sight of fully grown men in riot uniform repeatedly hitting them with full force on their legs as they screamed.

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.114-115.

I recommend you buy the book (link just above) if you wish to read Harry’s excellent rant about police violence that follows this account of the agressive trashing of a DiY party.

Some of the DiY bunch got themselves into trouble at this one, if you want to know what happened next I suggest you invest in Dreaming in Yellow! <- That’s the link for the review, scroll down for a link to buy

Deeper into the winter, we again encountered the hostility and heavy-handed approach of the representatives of the state in the decidedly unglamorous setting of an abandoned air force base near Sopley, Hampshire. There always appeared to be some cosmic rule of karma that applied to our parties. When the vibe was good (it was, of course, usually much easier to start a party than escape from one), we seemed to have luck firmly on our side. The very few which went weird were usually the disastrous ones involving bad drugs and arrests. This was to be one of the latter. Again, we arrived in two cars late on Saturday night; myself, Rick, Pete and DM (he wishes to remain anonymous and who can blame him) in one and Jack, Simon and Simon’s new partner Nikki in the other. In the back of Rick’s estate car were the decks, mixer and two crates of Simon’s records… Sopley RAF base was a pretty miserable affair with lots of war-era Nissan huts, abandoned in the seventies. The site had recently witnessed the nasty eviction of some travellers who had attempted to park up there; they had snipped the padlock and arranged the party as revenge, although no one had informed us of this. Any criminal damage taking a site could be used by the police as just cause to bust it. As we walked into one of the cold, abandoned huts selected for the party, there already seemed to be a strange atmosphere.

As Simon launched into a fairly dark acid set, we broke out some of the acid blotters we had brought and began consuming, which on reflection may not have been entirely wise. The party never really got going, perhaps because there was an inherent strangeness about raving in an old military base or because it just lacked the critical mass of numbers. We persevered through the night until, around five in the morning, during Simon’s masterful dropping of a remix of Phuture’s ‘Acid Trax’, several police officers strode into the building, looking distinctly unimpressed. Stopping the music, standard questions were asked: Who organised the party? Where are you from? What are your names? I think we just stared at the wall. Valiantly, Simon tried to negotiate with them but the game was up. I walked outside into the cold dawn air and saw that there were at least eight or ten police vehicles parked outside the gate, the only exit. Loitering for some time, we kept popping outside to see if the police had gone, which they had not. Finally, we began to drive off, with about five vehicles in convoy, ours being the last. As we neared the gate, the police allowed the other vehicles to leave and then moved in to block our car, probably because we were at the back and had two crates of records and two turntables. Clearly, the ranking officer, a policeman, made the signal to wind the window down and spoke to Rick [Digs]:
‘Did you organise this party?’
‘Erm, no…’
‘Did you play records at this party?’
‘Erm, no. Not really…’

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.116-117.

Even with roadblocks, especially as the new rave-dominated festivals exploded over that year, festival-goers would just abandon their cars and walk to the event, often for miles. It’s very tricky to keep thousands of young, excited and determined people away from a large site, as the police discovered. There being no mobile phones, we received a call on the landline sometime on the Thursday. A site had been taken, Sodbury Common near the village of Chipping Sodbury, then still in Avon, later Gloucestershire. Again, with no GPS we had to consult the obligatory UK road map to find the place, and then we loaded our system into a mate’s long wheel-base van and set off, having informed all our production crew and associates. Simple as that: no planning, no hesitation, no fear.

Having gained access to the common, it was clear that this would be big. In the end, as the ravers swelled the ranks on the Friday and Saturday night, this would turn out to be the biggest free festival I had ever been to; it was nowhere near the size of the Stonehenge festivals I had just missed years before, or Glastonbury, but much bigger than Avon Free in 1988. Press reports put the numbers at around four thousand, but it seemed much bigger to me, and I reckon there were a good ten thousand attendees on the Saturday night. We set up Black Box in front of our friend Roger’s double-decker bus, put the generators around the other side, plugged in the decks and turned up the bass.

It was Chipping Sodbury, the name by which this festival folklore, that would entered prove the turning point in the traveller/raver/free festival alliance. As far as I know, Sweat and Circus Warp were also playing, but we were so locked into our own DiY patch that I don’t think I left for two days. Hundreds gathered in front of our speakers, Jack and Simon played marathon sets beneath a clear sky and starry nights. It felt like a real gathering of the tribes. The Free Party People were there. Many had driven from Nottingham, Liverpool, Bath, Exeter, London; the atmosphere was wild, jubilant, ecstatic. People danced on our speakers, danced on buses, the sun shone the whole weekend, and, for the first time, it felt like dance music had not just been accepted at a free festival but had taken over. I sat on a traveller’s bus and stared wide-eyed as someone who will definitely remain nameless opened a bag to display five thousand ecstasy tablets and, again for the first time, it felt as though this synthetic new chemical had now become the drug of choice at festivals. And it showed.

On Sunday morning, Digs and Woosh took over the decks for hours, playing a truly eclectic and seductive set, moving from the house music of the night through funk, soul, hip-hop and jazz. In one of those moments where you realise things have truly changed, I watched with delight as hundreds of crusties, travellers, ravers and whatevers danced or sat down and bobbed along together to Lonnie Liston Smith, Roy Ayers and A Tribe Called Quest right through Sunday afternoon. Here was the true spiritual heir to the Summer of Love and the early acid house scene.

Chipping Sodbury was the first free festival so explicit in the presence of dance music. It was from here that most of the traveller’s initial hostility to house music began to fade. From here, trainers began replacing boots, ecstasy replacing acid or speed, and the unstoppable juggernaut of electronic beats replacing live bands and space-rock.

Not universally, of course, as some travellers never lost their instinctive dislike of house music, and there can be no doubt that trying to put kids to bed with the massively amplified metronomic beat of a large sound system pounding away for days would be a nightmare. But we had tasted the real freedom and joyous abandon that festivals now represented, and we had no intention of stopping.

Crucially, Chipping Sodbury had been a truly collective endeavour. Aside from the decks, DJs and sound system, where Jules was assisted by a growing team of proto-techies, a whole infrastructure of support was emerging. In addition to Rob’s projections, Moffball was establishing his own unique and magical lighting show, backdrops and decor. Different people would refill the all-important generators, without which we would have had only silence. Teams of the extended family would comb the crowd asking for donations in buckets, giving away love cabbages in return. Just as importantly, unlike a licensed rave where everyone was ordered to go home at 6am, these festivals went on for days. A truly eclectic mix of people from across the cultural spectrum were able to sit in the sun and talk. Hugs were often exchanged, and friendships were made for life. Mostly we were young, and although some of us were veterans of the festival scene and DiY had already been organising parties for two years, at Chipping Sodbury was twenty-four years old. Over this summer, our bonds with the travellers grew, and a core group would coalesce around this new, exciting scene. 

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.145-147.

Here is Matthew Collin’s account of the festival:

From Matthew Collin, Altered State: The Story Of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2009, p.228.

Steve sent us this clipping:

Some photos of the festival on this page (scroll down):

https://www.travellerhomes.co.uk/?gallery=63

This was a year before Castlemorton and there were apparently house systems there according to this page: http://www.oldskoolanthemz.com/forum/chillout-room/11812-good-old-days-acidic-warehousing-bygone-nights.html (it’s a great article which was apparently copied from the now-defunct DiY discs site).

For the first time the major festivals appeared not so much as hippy events but akin to the great orbital raves of 1988. Here, indeed, was the true spiritual heir to the Summer of Love. The commercial rave scene could no longer genuinely claim to represent love, unity or spiritual celebration. Chipping Sodbury, the eventual site of the Avon Free Festival of 1991, featured various house systems and was really the first free festival so explicit in it’s reveration of dance music. The antagonisms many travellers felt towards these foreign new sounds, also began to become apparent. Fair point, if you have to live on a site with a baby, five days of hugely amplified house is probably not ideal. However, it is undeniable that the influx of this culture breathed new life into an atrophying festival scene. The Avon Free in 1987, for example, had been without joy, a paean to negativity.

Alan ‘Tash’ Lodge had some unwelcome police attention there, the text below is from his page: http://tash.gn.apc.org/photo_degree_ntu.htm

In May 1991 at a small “free festival” near Chipping Sodbury in Avon, a major police operation was mounted and road blocks were set up. The police were attempting to search most of those attending for controlled drugs. This “blanket” activity was held by our counsel to be illegal, since the police must act on individual grounds to suspect any particular individual. The law says that they must not make judgements on colour, style, appearance etc.

This was, however, exactly what was occurring and I was asked by lawyers to go and photograph the circumstances for later use (slides 134 – 142). I have engaged in this activity many times and know police frequently object or are obstructive.

This occasion was no different and while photographing, was threatened with arrest. It was never clear exactly why, but it would have achieved getting me out of the way. I was also subjected to a search myself.

The story is described in a statement that I made to record an official complaint against the police.

The round house we never had a generator… Had to hotwire, FACT, I was there when it was done… not saying I did It.

I was at the Roundhouse gig on New Years Eve too. At the time it was derelict and owned by the Metropolitan police. the entrance was blocked with several hundred tonnes of rubble, totally filling the access road. Didn’t stop the Normals drving the rig and genny in on a six six-wheel-drive Militant that used to belong to Moscow State Circus, strainght over the top. Another crazy night. Next night wasn’t so great, after the security had done too much coke and gone to sleep and every mugger in London moved in.

The power was stolen from a light socket owned by British Rail at the back of the building and the system went off at 6:30 in the morning when they turned the lights off. Someone then found an alternative power source.

This is about half a page from Harry Harrison’s Dreaming in Yellow. Want to know the rest of the story? Buy the book. At the end of this passage is another link, click that and you’ll see my review of it. Do let us know if you have the flyer for this party, or the newspaper clippings, or even a photo! Memories as always welcome, however sketchy, just stick ’em in the comments. All comments are approved but please be patient

And so, on 10th August 1991 we threw Derbyshire’s first proper hit-and-run free party. With Phil’s bus parked across the old airfield, tarps strung from it, Black Box and decks assembled on the grassy concrete, this was truly an acid house party. Rick threw a flyer together:

‘DiY SAY GET IN 2 THE GROOVE: THIS PARTY IS ALL NIGHT, OUTDOOR AND FREE’

We distributed the flyers in Nottingham and Derby and, by golly, they worked. From the dozens of revellers who had made it to the small Biggin parties, we suddenly had hundreds. This level of lawlessness, with no charge, no fences, no security and no end time, was entirely new to most of them – and they loved it. The music went on until sometime on Sunday afternoon; the police arrived at some
point with only a couple of cars, but they didn’t seem particularly bothered. At the end of the day, why should they be? Does anyone really need to get hostile with a group of happy young people dancing in the sun? However, some hostility did emanate from the local paper, whose headline ran ‘Shock Disco Invasion Shatters Night Peace’. We, of course, loved that, later naming a track ‘Shock Disco Invasion’ in its honour.

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.167-168.

The date is vague, but this was DiY’s first party at this venue. More followed, and other rigs threw parties there too. The next one happened two weeks afterwards and we have a blog post for a Smokescreen party there. This excerpt from Harry Harrison’s Dreaming in Yellow, follow this link to get your own copy! My review of Dreaming can be found by clicking the book’s title at the underneath the quote.

…we excitedly went to have a look, drove through the unlocked gate and round into a stunning stone quarry, overgrown on the top and sides but with amazing vertical cliff faces and a big flat area for vehicles and dancing. It was probably the most perfect venue for a party I had ever seen. This natural amphitheatre was called Butts Quarry and would be added to the roll call of party places that would achieve mythical status among our tribe. And so on one wet Saturday evening in September, we rendezvoused with several travellers and their vehicles, and our lighting guys and several hundred party-heads danced the night and day away undisturbed in the drizzling rain in a quarry in deepest Derbyshire.

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.173.

In Harry Harrison’s account of Castlemorton he reveals that someone phoned DiY on the Thursday with news of the venue. By 7pm on the Friday they had driven on to the common, ‘unchallenged’. There’s a whole two chapters on this festival in Dreaming in Yellow (follow the link to buy a copy), but we’ll only reveal a couple of extracts here.

Over Friday night, more and more systems rolled in, set up, kicked off. Some of them we knew (Bedlam, Circus Normal), while others, such as Adrenalin and LSDiesel, we did not. Uniformly that weekend, they all played their characteristic fast techno, or ‘nosebleed’ as we called it (they called our music ‘fluffy’). In our marquee, right on the edge of the already huge gathering, we played house, club music, deep house and garage. On the Saturday and Sunday afternoons, we slowed it down and played an eclectic mix of downtempo beats, soul, funk, hip-hop and even jazz, and we were undoubtedly the only people to play John Coltrane on Castlemorton Common. Many, many people have told us since that, musically, we saved their lives. They came to our tent and never left. Hopefully, however, they missed Simon [DK]’s set on Sunday afternoon. By that time, he had been up for so long and had so over-indulged that two of us had to prop him up from behind. As he attempted to DJ, he kept placing the turntable needle onto a slip-mat instead of a record.

On Saturday night there were by now so many people that the crowds around different sound systems merged into one enormous dancefloor. Our music at Castlemorton was probably the most effective PR we ever did. Tens of thousands of people passed through our tent and liked what they heard. As dawn broke on Saturday morning, with hundreds of people dancing outside the marquee, we were surprised to see dozens of outside broadcast vans at the bottom of the slope, cameras and microphones pointed our way. Japan, New Zealand, America and Italy were all represented as they beamed the sights and sounds of DiY in full effect back to their respective nations. What we hadn’t really considered was that the police were probably studying the same images, including our incredibly prominent ninety-six square foot banner with the letters’ DiY’ in six-foot monochrome splendour. That backdrop would feature on many news bulletins and shocking documentaries on the moral outrage of drug availability at raves. For me, as we walked around the still-expanding site on Saturday afternoon, the atmosphere was less of a drug-crazed dystopia and more of a village fete. For once, the sun shone benignly throughout the bank holiday weekend and beyond. It was balmy and warm at night, and raving is so much more pleasant in those conditions. Laughter rang out, old acquaintances were renewed and fresh ones forged. Kids ran around and their parents lazed in the sun. Late to the game, we heard amazing stories of the quarry pool only five minutes walk up the main drag. Hurrying there, we witnessed the wonderful spectacle of hundreds of festival-goers, half of them naked, swimming in a beautiful, deep natural pool surrounded by ancient quarry walls. This was turning into some kind of English Shangri-La. The sheer diversity of the crowd was striking. Porsches, family saloons and Land Rovers rubbed bumpers with ambulances and ancient double-deckers. The old school festival crew were still there. This was, after all, supposed to be the Avon Free Festival, but they were just swamped. It was no longer a festival; it was a great big fucking massive party. There were mutterings among the old crowd about ‘cheesy quavers’ and people not burying their shit (a legitimate concern). Effectively, the free festival movement was laid to rest that weekend; the frantic and ravenous synthetic hydra of acid house had buried it.

Again, I was able to surreally watch images on the news on a battered old telly on a mate’s bus, as video footage of us below was beamed to the wider world. A day later, someone turned up with the Sunday papers and we realised, with a deep gulp, that we were the nation’s news. Being the mouthpiece of the landed classes who really own and run the country, The Sunday Telegraph had dedicated almost the whole front page to the events in which we were immersed, below the immortal headline ‘Hippies Fire Flares at Helicopter’. God’s honest truth, when someone announced the headline, thought for a second that someone had propelled some wide, seventies-style trousers at the police until I saw the picture; someone had genuinely tried to bring down the police helicopter with a powerful distress flare.

And so the festival continued, on into the week, becoming infamous as the biggest rave anywhere, ever. Our system ran from Friday evening until Tuesday morning, by which time our thoughts turned to getting it out intact. Not only had we been one of the most prominent rigs, but we also had a distinctive large yellow truck that had displayed our name on its side in huge letters. But, as is so often the case, the sheer bravery and daring of the travellers saved the day and a friend, Alix, sneaked our rig out in her horsebox in the middle of the night. The police waved down our Dodge truck with a confident look, only to find it empty apart from a few tank nettings and a lot of empty beer cans. Thank you, Alix, again and forever. Spiral Tribe went through until the next weekend, refusing to stop. They were perhaps less crafty, as confrontation was in their DNA. Thirteen of their number were arrested and their system impounded. They were collectively charged with organising the festival, which they hadn’t, and were finally acquitted in Crown Court following what was one of the most expensive prosecutions in English legal history.

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.193-195.

Here’s Tim’s account of the event, previously only available on the excellent but now-defunct Loft Sites:

And of course there was Castlemorton. Breathtaking in it’s sheer size and bravado, looking back on it, it is clear to see that this monster, week long rave attended by 25,000 people marked not only the peak but also the death of free rave culture. While watching us helplessly and largely furiously, England would now take serious steps to ensure that that these ultimately harmless parties could never happen again, at least on any reasonable scale. The eventual introduction of the Criminal Justice Bill gave police new powers to prevent and break up any form of outside beat-based gathering.

From this point on, rave would go overground. There was no where else to go. Sure, pockets still thrive here and there, but a once gloriously anticorporate culture became swallowed up in clubland. Muddy fields and hastily erected marquees were replaced by steel and chrome, and thirty pound entrance fees. Trainers and baggy jeans did not make it past the bouncers. Terra techno turned into slinky house. Shiny clubs, shiny drugs, shiny people, and shiny music. It did not feel bad anymore. It had become respectable.

Getting to Castlemorton was easy. It was advertised on the TV. Arriving home from work on Saturday, I turned on the news to see an excited local broadcaster relaying information about a huge gathering of ‘ravers’ and ‘hippies’ on Castlemorton Common, an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty at the foot of the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. They had mysteriously arrived overnight, many different groups co-ordinating beautifully and thwarting any attempts by the police to break up the large convoy of trucks, vans and old buses they were understandably becoming increasingly suspicious of.

I hopped it to 227 and picked up the few who had not already gone. For the first time I set off for a rave before the sun had even set. With such exact directions it was an easy drive through the Cotswolds, and we gradually became part of a convoy of cars full of ravers with the same destination. As night fell we began to leave the lights of the towns and villages behind us as we followed the road high up on to the vast common. Darkness now shrouded the rolling hills and only suggested at the space and beauty around us.

Then suddenly we were there. Cars were everywhere, parked randomly and haphazardly on either side of the road, which led directly through the middle of the gathering. We ditched my car and followed the general movement of people away from their vehicles and towards the distant throb of beats and bass.

It was soon clear that most of the traveling sound systems were there, each with their own individual party set up. At the center of it all, and the ringleaders behind the entire event, was, of course, Spiral Tribe. And that was where we were heading.

We continued walking down the road along which stalls and vendors had sprung up, selling all kinds of rave paraphernalia; bottled water, Vicks sticks, bongs, rizlas, whistles, glo sticks, mix tapes etc. Drugs of all kinds were openly available. People were hanging out, shopping, chatting, coming up on a pill, sharing a spliff. It kind of felt like being in some kind of bizarre town center, in a world where ravers had taken over. And always, in the background, the boom boom of the sound systems, reminding us why we were there.

After passing several large marquees each with their own rave in full swing, we arrived at Spiral Tribe’s own party. Their motley collection of vehicles were arranged in a large circle. This provided an amphitheatre into which their DJ’s pumped hard tribal techno. As always the focal point was a huge black and white spiral hanging from the side of one of their lorries, right next to the one sided van which housed the decks. Maggie and I put up the tent we had been carrying – she was intending to stay a few days – just to one side of the main circle. We scored some mushrooms and swallowed them down with a few sips of water.

While we were hanging out, waiting for the mushies to kick in, Mitch turned up with recommendations for good E’s. There were some shit hot Tangerine Dreams about he confided, if you could find them. Before long I had sniffed them out and had two in my belly. My own private party was beginning.

Fortuitously, the E’s turned out to be two of the sweetest ever. My memories of the night are little more than drifting around in a blissful haze, I’m not even sure if I danced. But that’s not the point, I was off my head at Castlemorton and that’s what counts.

As dawn began to break I lapped up a wrap of speed, I was so used to doing this now I barely even needed water to help it down. The sky became a little clearer and I started to recognize people everywhere – no one was missing this one. All of the heads from Witney were there. Being my home town this caused much handshaking and mutual jibbering affection. The whole of the Oxford Massive had made it, along with all my new friends from all over the place, who I had met through these weekly parties. There were several people I hadn’t seen for years, including of course a few spanners who had just come to check out the show after seeing it on the news. None the less, I was immensely pleased to see everyone, and greeted them all with much enthusiasm.

Night slipped back into day and in the sunshine the enormity of the carnival we were part of became clear. Tents, cars and people stretched out in all directions, creating a multi coloured splash in the languid countryside. There were several mini travelers villages, complete with dogs, fires and scruffy kids who appeared quite at home amidst all the madness. And spaced throughout this were the raves themselves, each with their own sound and their own vibe.

Framing this were the Malvern Hills rising majestically through the morning mist.

Many ravers began to sit in loose groups, spark up a few spliffs and just take it all in. We knew right then that this was something special. This would never happen again.

At some point I met up with Georgia, who dragged me away from the Sprirals to the DiY tent where she had spent most of the night with her mates. The large dance area was now quite empty, the floor littered with empty Evian bottles, roaches and butt ends. A bit later on I spotted Easygroove sitting in the back of an open van with some mates. By now we clearly recognized each other, and we nodded hello, like we always did. I even bumped into my sister. Half of England seemed to be there that weekend.

The party continued on for several days, but I had to be back for work on Monday. So late on Sunday afternoon I left many happy people behind and headed home.

Some more newspaper clippings have just turned up, big up to Simon K for these, which have been transcribed for the benefit of anyone following this site who can’t access the text in the images. It is worth mentioning that our long term goal is to have all of our newspaper articles and book excerpts transcribed

12,000 revellers descend on village for 4-day rave

Hippy days are here again!

Unless you’ve got this lot in your back garden

By BILL DANIELS

THE hippy days of the Sixties were back with a vengeance yesterday as Britain’s biggest-ever illegal party swung into its fourth night.

But for the tiny village reluctantly playing host to 25,000 revellers, it seemed that the self-styled peace people were making WAR, not love. A police helicopter flying over the crowd narrowly escaped disaster when it was fired on with five marine distress flares. 

And the ear-splitting throb of acid music could be heard 10 miles from the sprawling city of tents and camper vans infesting Castlemorton Common, near Malvern, Worcs.

Meanwhile police could only stand and watch for fear of sparking a full-scale riot. Drug-dealers openly set up shop to push Ecstacy and LSD. One even did the rounds bearing a tray of freshly-baked “hash cookies’.

Trapped

Used syringes were among rubbish littering the 700-acre common. Furious locals report their garden fences have been ripped up for fire wood. Chickens and sheep have been poached. 

Some families have sent terrified children to stay with relatives.

But others have become prisoners in their own homes – surrounded by the vehicles choking the narrow lanes.

Villager Jill Gilbert, 29, said: “Before long, the residents are going to get their shotguns and blast that music machine.”

West Mercia police had 400 officers, some in riot gear, on standby. They claim the helicopter attack vindicates their decision to keep a low profile.

Assistant Chief Constable Phillip Davies said: “This shows the lengths they will go to prevent police gaining access. The safety of my officers must be one of my priorities.”

Western Daily Press Monday 25th May:

Police powerless as 20,000 attend rave

By Giles Rees

THE biggest, noisiest and most lawless party of the year roared on last night as police stood and watched.

At Castlemorton Common, beneath the Malvern Hills of Hereford and Worcester, an estimated 20,000 hippies and ravers were having a ball.

They took drugs, they drank they danced and they made love.

They also turned a beautiful corner of England into a filthy, litter-strewn tip.

The invasion of Castlemorton began late on Friday as illegal hippy camps in Gloucestershire and Avon were cleared by police.

A convoy of buses and cars snaked bumper-to-bumper into the picturesque village, normal population 600.

Within hours a sprawling shanty town of tents, coaches and caravans was set up on the rolling common on the edge of the village.

Its sheer size forced West Mercia into an effective surrender with officers able to do little more than observe from a distance.

By yesterday the encampment, with no toilets, sanitary facilities or first-aid, had become a ghetto.

Drugs were openly on sale and alcohol was available from illegal bars.

Dirty-faced toddlers played by camp fires fuelled with hacked-down trees.

Amid all the squalor however, there was money.

Dotted among the ramshackle coaches and caravans were spotless Range Rovers and BMWs.

At eight different “dance centres” Acid House music pounded remorselessly and glossy leaflets advertising other Acid parties were given out.

Last night the festival of Castlemorton was still swinging.

Traveller Carol, aged 25, from Wiltshire, said: “We are having a good time. The

convoy will probably break up some time. I don’t know when.”

Farmers and villagers on the edge of the common were close to despair. There were

unconfirmed reports of one gunpoint confrontation.

Farmer’s wife Mrs Margaret Jones, aged 41, said gates had been broken, fields

driven through and livestock chased.

“I do not see what gives people the right to behave like this,” she said.

Villager Julie Williams, aged 24, who lives on the edge of the common, said: “We

have never had anything like this before. We can’t believe it. It’s frightening up there.”

West Mercia police said there had been six arrests and the situation was being monitored and contained.

A spokesman said: “We shall be considering our policy regarding the camp in conjunction with Malvern Hills district council and the Malvern Hills Conservators.

• West Mercia police set up a 24-hour helpline for local people who wanted to discuss problems arising from the event and the police’s approach to it. The number is 0684 893630.

A VILLAGE OF NIGHTMARES

By RICHARD CREASY

25,000 invaders turn rural peace into anarchy

THE tiny community of Castlemorton Common is normally a safe and peaceful haven – the English countryside at its tranquil best.

But the past three days has left its 800 inhabitants stunned and terrified. They are prisoners in their own homes from 25,000 invaders who mock a pitifully small police operation.

Britain’s biggest illegal party was still in full swing last night with drugs like Ecstasy, LSD and acid being openly sold by dealers. Worried families in the village have sent their children to stay with relatives and others are sleeping with shotguns under their beds.

“Basically there is total anarchy on the common. We feel sick with fear and just so helpless,’ said Jill Gilbert, 29.

“It’s a complete no-go area for the police because they are so outnumbered and don’t want to spark off anything worse.”

The police admitted yesterday they had been hopelessly under-manned for the mass invasion and set up a special hotline to advise worried about the situation. During yesterday afternoon a helicopter with three policemen on board narrowly missed five ship distress flares fired from the festival site.

“This highly disturbing incident clearly illustrates the lengths to which these people will go to try to prevent police access to the site,” said West Mercia’s assistant chief constable Phillip Davies.

“Under current circumstances, we are clearly obliged to adopt a low-key approach on the site in order to avoid unnecessary conflict with members of this huge gathering. 

“Many of them have already displayed an extremely aggressive attitude towards the police, and the safety of officers must be one of my priorities.

“This is already a difficult situation, but I do not wish to provoke things further by sparking off large-scale disorder.”

“The result of the low police presence has been thousands of hippies spending three days dancing, drinking, taking drugs and making love on Castlemorton Common, near Malvern, Worcestershire.”

Acid music can be heard 10 miles away blasting out round the clock from the huge tented shanty-town.

One drug dealer carried a tray loaded with hash cookies selling for £1 each.

Since the invasion hippies have ripped down trees and fences to burn on their camp fires and a mountain of rubbish is piling up on the 700-acre common. The site has no toilets.

Raiding parties in search of wood for fires, food and animal feed pilfered from neighbouring sheds, barns and gardens.

Packs of maurauding dogs owned by the travelling hippies scavenge in the mounds of rubbish and sheep have been savaged.

The pub, post office and shops have shut down for fear of trouble.

Some people are trapped in their homes because scores of cars and lorries block their entrances. 

So far 30 people have been arrested in the area for drugs related offences.

The nightmare began on Friday when convoys of ramshackle vehicles converged on to the common land after an advance party broke through a thin police line.

Outnumbered police conceded defeat and were powerless to stop the illegal Bank Holiday music and drugs festival.

“The music is booming every night and it seems to get louder every half-an-hour,’ said villager Peter Cooksey, “The place has become totally lawless. The peace of the village has been shattered.”

Scared Julie Biggs, 21, has had to run the tiny store in neighbouring Welland under constant police guard. “Everyone here is absolutely petrified. I have had terrible problems with hippies coming into the store and shop-lifting. I couldn’t work here if it were not for police protection, I would be too frightened.”

Angry publican Barry Smith, landlord of the Robin Hood, said: “Most people are too afraid to come out of their homes. If had lived up on the common I would have shot someone by now.”

One hippy, dressed in ragged denims openly touted ecstasy and LSD as he pushed a young baby in a pram across the Common, once an area of outstanding natural beauty.

Some offered “magic mushroom” cider, mindbending cocktail of drugs and alcohol, from makeshift stalls.

A traveller who gave his name as Richard said he had driven his battered bus from North Lincolnshire. He and his companions were a “peace loving group out to have a good time”.

“There is nothing wrong with what we are doing. We are here to have fun in the sun,” he said.

“We chose to live this way and rejected the hassles associated with a conventional way of life.

“Some say we are dirty but we are environmentally conscious, we make efforts not to dump rubbish.

“It makes more sense to bury your waste instead of flushing it away with harmful chemicals.

“People generally have it in for us because of our lifestyle. I think many envy us because of our freedom.”

You can find more newspaper articles if you scroll down

Here are some photos James sent us, thanks a million James, we love them!

Some quotes on Castlemorton from books:

From Matthew Collin, Altered State: The Story Of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2009, p.228-232.

From Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash : A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture. London: Picador, 1998, p.135-140.

UPDATE 24/10/21:

Here is a slideshow by top subculture chronicler Alan ‘Tash’ Lodge, enjoy!

We added the following sound systems, give us a shout in the comments if something is here that shouldn’t be, or if you know about any cases of rigs working together:

Armageddon

Conspiracy

Also interested to hear whether the list in the title is correct

Regular contributor Simon M sent us this report:

There were rumours going round about a free festival being held somewhere in the west country on the 23rd. At first we thought it might be at Chipping Sodbury, but late on Saturday night we found out it was going to be near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. We switched off the episode of Casualty we’d been watching (which was about a drugs overdose) and the four of us set off from Bridport towards Gloucestershire in my gold Mini Metro.

Once we got past Bristol we saw loads of other ravers and travellers headed in the same direction. Near Tewkesbury we joined a convoy of disparate vehicles that stretched for miles towards Castlemorton Common and realised this was going to be a big free festival.

Having got appropriately stoned whilst dawdling along in the line of traffic we finally arrived on site at about 2am and parked the overheated Metro on the side of the road going through the common. Jumping out of the car we hurried towards the lights flashing into the sky from what looked like a huge sprawling township that had grown out of nowhere. Music blasted out in all directions, a mash-up of house, hardcore, breakbeat and techno. There were people every where and parties already in full swing.

Surrounding the marquees were traveller buses, ravers cars, tents, fibreglass sculptures and human gyroscopes. People were selling stuff all over the site. Beer, dope, E’s, acid, speed, rizlas, fags, coffee. We scored and dropped some ecstacy and stayed around the DiY and Circus Warp tents for the night.

After coming up, my fellow raver, dressed in a boiler suit and gas mask hat turned yellow and went outside to puke. I only found him much later, dancing, luvved up, ice lolly in hand. Once the sun came up we had a better idea of the layout of the site and in amongst the 40,000 party goers we found some friends from Dorset and joined them at Spiral Tribe. We sniffed some K and did some wobbly dancing, creating solid shapes out of thin air.

I was never a big fan of Spiral’s hardcore music and would have preferred to be back at DiY, but the Ketamine had me stuck to the spot like glue. Some travellers with families were quite rightly annoyed at Spiral Tribe’s strict policy of 24 hour hardcore and techno. Other systems mellowed out with some dub for a few hours on the Sunday to give people a breather and for kids to get some sleep, but not Spiral.

Commenter Jam Smoot told us about this Sparks and Martian at Castlemorton mix:

I missed Castlemorton but I believe everyone who says it was wicked. Interesting that dr_box (see below) mentioned the police herding him onto the common, people often forget that the travellers and soundystems were pushed/chased there by the cops. By the way, if anyone has exact dates for this please let us know, we know it’s quoted as going on for 6 days, but we need some sort-of-facts!

Interesting query from Hardcore Bob in the comments: the Techno Travellers (who we’ve now added to the headline) had their rig in the blue and red marquee, so which other rigs were there, and which tents were they in? Let us know in the comments

Thanks!

More book excerpts:

From Ian Young, It’s Not About Me! Confessions Of A Recovered Outlaw Addict- From Living Hell To Living Big. Norwich: Anoma Press, 2013, p.59-60.

We came across three longish (slightly chewed) VHS videos of Castlemorton free festival recently. Thanks a million to youtuber discodelinquent (great name by the way!) for uploading them. Discodelinquent has also uploaded some footage from Sugarlump parties. We’ll probably do a post on Sugarlump sound system sooner or later… Meanwhile, enjoy these videos:

Here’s a quote about Castlemorton from ‘Adventures In Wonderland’ by Sheryl Garratt:

Mr Arm (you know who you are!) let us scan a load of newspaper cuttings from his scrapbook. Big up! :

The following photo was captioned “Festivalgoers on Castlemorton Common yesterday, enjoying the sound of music in the Malvern Hills”.

The following photo was captioned “Common nuisance: The 20,000 hippies encamped at Castlemorton common yesterday”.

A classic headline:

Click on images for larger versions:

The following picture and article appeared with the headline: “Villagers threaten to burn out hippies -An illegal festival in the Malverns has driven people living near the site to breaking point”

Continuation of article above, click on image below for larger version:

The following article and photo appeared together:

Here are a couple of videos, the first one’s been online for ages, the second one’s newer and includes some footage taken near the spiral rig-

Thanks youtuber Yangow for the first vid, and thanks youtuber hemustbemad for uploading the second (he credits his friend Matt with filming).

Old friend Simon M was there, and he sent us this page from his diary:

These great photos courtesy of Pete Dibdin whose work can be found at http://www.peterdibdin.com/ :

The photos below are from George McKay‘s book ‘Senseless Acts of Beauty’ and I believe they were taken by Alan ‘Tash’ Lodge (whose excellent website you can find in the links on the right hand side of our main page.

The Riddler (who has a great site, well worth a browse), has some pics of castlemorton here:

http://www.webm8.co.uk/riddler/photographs_rave/castle_morton-1992/index.html

A Flickr pool with some pics of Castlemorton:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/castlemorton/pool/

Tim Aldiss’s site, now defunct but accessible via Wayback Machine, has his account of his trip to Castlemorton (his rave diaries are a good read, look at the other entries while you’re there)-

https://web.archive.org/web/20180925215944/http://www.loftsites.co.uk/old_school_rave/diaries/castlemorton_common.html

Here are a couple of Guardian articles about Castlemorton etc: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jul/11/castlemorton-free-party-scene-spiral-tribe?showallcomments=true

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/12/90s-spiral-tribe-free-parties

This lucky lucky person was there too:

dr_box wrote:

Castle Morton was an experience.. I’d been visiting a mates place in East London and he was coming over to mine in the depths of West Wales afterwards. we’d heard that there was a festi down near Bristol that weekend, so set off on the hunt along the M4. At one of the service stations along the M4 we got a lift from a Green godess fire engine that was loaded down with kit and Hippies, it was one of the vehicles spiral tribe was using to get to the festival. As we got close we found out that the festival might not be on, so set off on a hunt. the police herded us up to Castle Morton, by the time we got close there were several miles of trucks and busses full of people. At one point the line stopped and a guy with us got out and started counting vehicles as he walked towards the front. when the line started moving again, he waited for us to catch up. he’d counted over seven hundred vehicles, and he hadn’t reached the front of the line.

When we got there, the sun was setting and from the hills overlooking the site you could see the site starting to pulse with light and hear blasts of sound as things were set up. Travelling off all the way to the horizon there was a ribbon of headlights delivering more people to the festival.

Blinding weekend, my mate had his first E experience, Watched the police try and drive through the centre of the crowd. they got stopped in the middle, and a nameless longhair got passed over the crowd, and started selling Acid off the bonnet of the police car. after futilely attempting to get out of the car the plod ended up just laughing at the sheer balls of him.

Nighttime had more than its fair quota of low flying helicopters with spotlights. (although someone did take a potshot at them with a firework)

Last of the truly fun free festivals.

Both of the rigs involved were left out of our original post, sorry about that Circus Lunatekkers and Bedlammers!

Here’s an entry from Dan’s diary, thanks again Dan

Here are some photos taken at and around this party by photographer Pete Dibdin:

Photos courtesy of Pete Dibdin whose work can be found at http://www.peterdibdin.com/

UPDATE 13/08/12:

23 January 1993
Spiral Tribe
Disused Depository, Brent Cross, London
Diary entry:
Fucking too fucking good the most violent aggressive unmusical music I ever heard, fast noteless, tuneless grinding noise. Gave Mark lift in Tom’s car. Mental building.

Not sure how we got to this party but when we arrived Tom asked me if I could go and pick up Mark from Spiral Tribe, who was still back at their squat on Uxbridge Road. Tom couldn’t because he was too out of it on ketamine already. I’d just taken some drugs, so it became a race against time driving across London before I came up. I picked up Mark, Sebastian and Emily, all clothed in black bomber jackets and combats with shaved heads. I felt a bit old skool Day-Glo in my orange jeans and tie-dye T-shirt.

The music that night was relentless pounding techno. And outside was the best collection of matt black traveller vehicles I’d ever seen.

Many thanks to Simon M for the write up. He promised more of the same. Looking forward to it His music can be found at https://nultielrecords.blogspot.com/

UPDATE 30/09/09: Thanks to an old friend’s generosity we now have this flyer:

Rumours from a source very close to Spiral Tribe at the time indicated that this never happened due to one of them doing a runner with the money and spending it on crack. The flyer below is for the free event that happened in its place:

Was anyone else there? Anything to add?

More tales from Oli, a Pepperbox Person. Thanks loads man!

The last of the Pepperbox era parties was in the Rising Sun. 

This would have taken place the weekend after Sopley.

We were on a roll in those days.

We were doing Pepperbox every weekend. Then, when that got shut down, we did Barton Stacey the following weekend.

The weekend after that we did Sopley.

And then the following week was The Rising Sun.

I know Harry believes that Sopley happened during the winter but I am pretty confident about that timeline. 

This was another squat party, like my first, in Frowds House. 

The Rising Sun was a long established pub in Castle Street. 

As was the fashion in the mid 1980s it became a ghastly wine bar and was renamed Sunnies. 

At some point, probably during 1989 or 1990, it closed down.

It was squatted by the usual suspects who had been squatting various city centre properties for the previous year or so, including Frowds House and a 4-storey building in Endless Street. 

We were in to Autumn at this stage so an indoor party made sense and the squat had already been taken. 

We invited DIY as guests again.

We used the PFP mattress sound system (so called due to the speakers being a unique design that resembled a mattress, we were lent the system by Midnight Lasers).

There were no flyers for this one. 

Holding the venue against police attack wasn’t an issue as there was no way that Wiltshire Constabulary would have dared to enter the property. It would simply have been too dangerous. 

With that in mind, I should mention an incident at the Endless Street squat some months previously, that may explain the reticence of the coppers to enter the Rising Sun squat. 

Several plod had arrived in Endless Street, in order to arrest one of the residents. 

They knocked on the door. 

There was a narrow doorway that opened in to a small hall. 

After some general argy-bargy and shouting someone grabbed one of the constables and pulled him inside the property; the door was slammed shut, leaving his colleagues out on the street. 

Inside the cramped hallway, a flurry of kicks and punches were aimed at the hapless copper, his helmet was ‘liberated’ and after no more than 20 seconds the door was opened again and he was unceremoniously shoved back outside into the arms of his colleagues. 

The gaggle of plod, along with their now helmetless comrade, left, tails between their legs. 

It is worth bearing in mind that there were no immediate repercussions from this incident. 

Perhaps the officers involved made a pact never to speak of what had happened, or maybe they felt they would bide their time, and wait for the appropriate moment to exact revenge. 

I favour the latter explanation, as it would go some way to explaining the unhinged violent behaviour of Wiltshire’s finest when breaking up the Pitton party, a few months later. 

Back to the Rising Sun….. 

The police shut down the whole of Salisbury for this one.

Every road into the city centre from the ring road was cordoned off. 

But the former pub was already heaving with people and the party was jumping. 

There was a great atmosphere at this one. 

A problem arose when DIY arrived, as the police were preventing people from walking along Castle Street and entering the squat. 

The legality of which was questionable. 

I was living in a shared house (of legendary repute) in Hamilton Road in those days, and left the party to meet Simon and Jack who had travelled down from Nottingham. 

DJ ETC was left manning the turntables. 

We walked down Hamilton Road to Castle Street, carrying Simon and Jack’s records. 

We got to within a few metres of the venue, only to be met by several police officers, including one in a peaked cap, presumably an inspector. 

He had a bit of a chip on his shoulder and told us to turn around and leave the area. 

I questioned his legal right to prevent us from going about our lawful business, carrying boxes of records along the street (ha ha ha) and was told that if we didn’t comply, he’d nick us all. 

It is important to be aware of the geography of this particular part of Salisbury. 

Castle Street runs from the ring road into the Market Square. The Rising Sun sits on Castle Street. 

However, behind the Rising Sun, the River Avon runs parallel to Castle Street. 

So myself and our guests from Nottingham walked towards the ring road, then turned left along Nelson Road and crossed a bridge over the Avon. 

We turned left again, following the river to another pub on the opposite bank from the Rising Sun. 

It was called the Boat House, and, it being midnight, was shut.

The Boat House was so called because one could have a beer in the garden, and rent a boat to enjoy a leisurely row along the Avon. 

We liberated one of these boats, clambering aboard with Simon, Jack and their records, and then proceeded to row the 50 metres or so upstream to the back of the Rising Sun on the opposite bank. 

We disembarked and entered the venue from the rear. 

The DIY guys hit the decks and the party continued all night. 

However, I made my way upstairs to one of the rooms overlooking the front of the pub on Castle Street. 

Opening the window, I looked down below to where the inspector who had prevented us from entering was standing with his colleagues. 

“Oi! Mate!” I shouted. 

The inspector looked up. 

On seeing me, he looked incredulous, and then angry. Really angry. But he had no words. He literally lost the ability to speak, such was his anger. 

I shouted down “We managed to get in mate, and the party is absolutely rocking! Your daughter is downstairs, and she’s having a great time!” 

And with that, I closed the window and disappeared from sight. 

That was one of my favourite moments in my short career putting on parties! 

Priceless. 

The party went without a hitch, and because it was a squat, there was no pressure to get the mattress sound system out and past the coppers the following morning. 

It stayed there for a few days. 

Unfortunately, during this time, all the cables were stolen by someone living in the squat. This meant a big financial hit for Kevin and Richard from Midnight Lasers, and they were no longer willing to let us use their rig. We had put the parties on for nothing and had no money to reimburse them. 

After the Rising Sun, DJ ETC and myself became virtually the most wanted people in Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset.

It became impossible for us to do anything in our area.

Putting on parties in Wiltshire was madness really.

Wiltshire Constabulary (motto: Primus et Optimus – first and best) prided themselves as being the anti-hippie force. And they did enjoy the prospect of violence.

This was evidenced at Pitton of course. 

Nasty bunch.

Massive thanks to David Stooke, the artist who created this and the other Pepperbox flyers. Here’s what he wrote in a comment on another post. More from David soon, stay posted Be sure to check out his other artwork (link below):

I designed the flyers for the three Pepperbox Free Parties, I can’t remember the order of them now but they were called “Total Recall”, “The Fools on the Hill” and “The Ley Line Lunatics”. I was living in a bus at the time, Oli and Eric would come up to visit me late in the evening and want finished artwork there and then. No time to think, no time to try out different ideas, just get drawing! They were all done in a combination of black fine liner felt pen and black acrylic paint on sheets of white cardboard. I would sketch them out quickly in pencil and then draw the detailed bits in fine liner, and fill in the larger areas with black acrylic paint. If I remember correctly one of them I didn’t like, it was just too rushed, but the other two were quite good! I wish I’d kept the original artwork but foolishly let Oli keep it, now it’s all disappeared unfortunately. And I don’t have any of the actual flyers which were just photocopies and very cheaply printed. So there you have the story of the Pepperbox flyers! Check out my new age traveller and free festival art at http://www.davidstooke.co.uk

The following excerpt from Dreaming in Yellow credits the Pepperbox bunch with inventing the Free Party:

Rick [Digs], Pete [Woosh] and I didn’t go to but the party certainly lived up to its claims, Simon [DK] heading down with [DJs] Jack and Damian, then returning to Nottingham to rant for days about this incredible party that went on all morning and where he and Jack had played for hours and met loads of amazing people. A party with no entry fee, no security, no fences, not even a a tent or marquee covering the decks. By this stage, we were veterans of house parties and raves, veterans of free festivals too, but it had not really occurred to us to combine these two concepts into what would become known simply as ‘free parties’. Like all great ideas, it would seem obvious with hindsight.

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.104.

This was the third People From Pepperbox party at this location. The first one is here, the second one is here, and the last one, Ley Line Lunatics is here. Their party at Barton Stacey is here.

If you have any memories do please give us a shout in the comments. If you have longer bits of writing, photos or videos you want to send us about this party the best way to do that is by emailing us at freepartypeople (at) wordpress (dot) co (dot) uk.

We think this photo is from this party. It’s from David Stooke (thank you again David), who told us it was ‘a colour photo of my bus (the one at the front), taken the morning after the last of the three parties. I love the casualty lying unconscious in the wet, dewy grass! ‘ See his paintings here.

Dreaming in Yellow has the September 1st party as Earth Magyck but the flyer we’ve seen has Ley Line Lunatics printed on the front.

The People From Pepperbox joined forces with DiY’s DJs for this, the fourth (?) and final Pepperbox Hill party.

The following quote is from the brilliant Dreaming in Yellow, reviewed here.

Drawn by Simon’s tales [about Total Recall, the previous party at Pepperbox Hill], we all headed down in separate cars to the next Pepperbox party, named Earth Magyck, the following weekend, Saturday 1 September 1990. Rick, Pete, Barbara and I went via another big Raindance event, the last big pay party we would attend as punters. It had proved enjoyable but would be nothing compared to the free event, which we drove fast through the night to reach. With the car parked, we walked up to the party site, neckingthe tablets we had brought with us. In the darkness, we could hear the muffled bass kick, which will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever searched for a free party in the dark night.

As we entered the circle of several hundred dancers loosely gathered around the decks, it became apparent just what a diverse group this was. In the shadows, some travellers’ vehicles were parked up, people climbing in and out of these crazily painted and eccentric machines. There was one strip of lights behind the DJ table, splashing vivid blocks of colour across the trees and occasionally highlighting the old monument itself. Jack was playing, locking the dancers further into the groove as Simon, backed by his guardian Damian, was going through his records; obviously, he would be playing some soon. And as the ecstasy kicked in, the whole scene reminded me of something imagined from the sixties, a communal ritual under the stars, a congregation free to dance, to talk, to wander off. Freedom made reality. All the wild freedom so promised by early acid house and now so absent from events like the one we had just driven from.

I wondered who had organised such a breathtakingly magical yet brazenly illicit event. In the dawn, as Simon took to his own decks (previously they had been using standard belt-drive turntables) for what would turn into a marathon set in the Wiltshire sunshine, we would find out. Chilly Phil was there, plus several of his travelling companions we had met at Glastonbury: Boysie, Emma, Roger, Gav. Other travellers we didn’t know had come over from the nearby site, plus some from Stroud, including a chirpy young chap whose name seemed to be Moffball. A contingent from Bournemouth were dancing
together, including Justin and Nige, who DJed together as North and South (one being from Manchester, the other local), Mark Darby, who would later set up Mighty Force Records in Exeter, Hammy, and some other townies.

Then there was a group of Scousers, identifiable by their tracksuits, a group of whom had moved to the south coast of Hampshire to ‘graft’. Clearly, the leader of this contingent was a square-jawed bloke resplendent in a gold jumpsuit and headband who would be introduced to us as Rory. Completing the eclectic gathering were the local Salisbury crowd, particularly their main organisers, two seemingly inseparable young men named Oli and Eric. Together they had arranged these parties, and although they were communal affairs where you brought what you could contribute, these two had sorted out the business end: decks, mixer, lights and, most importantly, the sound system. The generator had probably come from the travellers, as they needed them for their way of life. Ingeniously, Oli and Eric had started a club event in the back of a Salisbury pub called the Barron of Beef, ostensibly hiring a PA for this licensed venue but then taking it up to Pepperbox at the end and returning it to the pub before the owners came to pick it up.

As the sun climbed slowly into the sky, Simon would continue to play for hours. He had a different set of records to the other local DJs, as we had musically come of age immersed in the northern club scene. Additionally, he was being supplied with quality American imports, which probably didn’t make it down to the south-west. Either way, from the start, he acquired a legendary status that would never leave him. As the party continued past 9am, visitors arrived at the popular beauty spot and, inevitably, the police were not far behind. Initially fairly friendly, their attitude hardened as we all collectively ignored their requests.

Witnessing this ongoing game of cat-and-mouse negotiation, as support for our comrade we stood behind Simon on the decks. Demanding to know who the organisers were, a question with which we would become wearily familiar, they understandably honed in on Simon, the only person actively doing anything. Excuses were mumbled, ignorance claimed. Simon eventually gave them his real name, which raised a few eyebrows and was to have drastic consequences further down the line. There came that moment when it was time for the party to end, when the realisation strikes that the police really have had enough and arrests will soon follow. Speakers were loaded into vehicles, decks placed in the boots of cars, people tidied up.

As I recall, most people had left as we drove out on the A36, leaving only the travellers’ vehicles bringing up the rear, and as Phil’s bus pulled out into the road, two police vehicles blocked his way. This would be the first of many, many encounters with the forces of authority around a free party, and as the police entered Phil’s vehicle, the feeling of helpless agitation was overwhelming. After an agonisingly long wait, they emerged and drove off, leaving a relieved looking man to drive his bus back to site. Despite the police actions and the realisation that the location was no longer a viable party site, we set off back to Nottingham, elated and reverential over what we had experienced. During the emotional intensity of that party, alliances had been formed and friendships made that would have enormous repercussions for all of us present. Inspired, we wanted to do this again, and soon. We wouldn’t have to wait very long.

Harry Harrison, Dreaming in Yellow. Velocity Press, 2022, p.104-107.

What else do you know? Memories, however scattered, are welcome here, just have a waffle in the comments If you want to send us images or have more to say, then email us: freepartypeople (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk .

We have seen a flyer, do let us know if you have a photo of it as we would love to include it here!

Overall, we know very little about these parties. NB Here is the page for the first one which took place at the start of August one, the second one, the August Bank Holiday one (Total Recall), and the party on the airfield at Barton Stacey.

David Stooke wrote us an email about this first Pepperbox party (there seem to have been others prior to this but the series of three parties that David drew the flyers for are the ones that everyone still talks about thirty-odd years later). This is his tale about drawing those flyers (which we would still love to see scans of, we know they’re out there!

I was living in an old bus around Salisbury at the time, knew Oli and Eric very well and we were all totally into the music. This has begun a couple or three years before, when a mutual friend of ours discovered the “Land of Oz” club nights in Heaven, below Charing Cross Station. He was there right at the beginning, going to Shoom and Phuture, in fact he was so ahead of the curve that we all thought he had gone slightly bonkers. We were all saying “Have you heard about Roger? He’s going to Disco’s”! We hadn’t heard of House music, at the time disco music was still uncool, we all thought he’d lost the plot! But he started sending mix CDs down to us in Salisbury, and invited some of us up to the Land of Oz and it wasn’t long before we all knew that something incredible was beginning to stir. Fast forward to the time of the first Pepperbox Free Party and by now it was getting huge. Oli and Eric did most of the organising, there were a couple of others as well, can’t remember them now, they were more peripheral. I was a long established artist, I’d been painting and drawing the free festivals at Stonehenge and the New Age Travellers for getting on for 10 years at that point, so I was used to people wanting posters and flyers designed for gigs, etc.

My bus was parked up a lane between fields about 10 miles out of Salisbury and one night, quite late, and pitch black, Oli and Eric turned up at the bus wanting a flyer designed to advertise the first of the three parties. At later dates I also did the others, but it was always the same scenario, the late night knock at the door, the heartfelt plea, can I design them something, and can they have it there and then? So, no time at all to try and come up with several ideas, it was a case of gathering all the candles together behind my shoulder to get enough light to draw at that time of night. I’d sketch the idea out in pencil lightly, then use a fine liner felt pen to do the more detailed, precise bits, a fatter magic marker to do some less detailed areas, and finally black acrylic paint to fill in the big areas. Usually, when it was too late to change anything, a better idea would spring into my mind but we had to go with that initial first design. They would take them away and get them photocopied on thin paper, they were cheap to produce and looked that way, rough and ready, nothing fancy. Somehow they really caught the vibe of the events, so despite being stressed out at the time, wishing I’d been given a few days notice to play with various ideas, in actual fact they suited the parties perfectly!

another design with Oli and Eric’s faces on, taken from the famous photo by Alan Lodge. I did mention my website, www.davidstooke.co.uk

Where my free festival and New Age Traveller artwork can be seen.

Hope these words and images provide a little more detail on those free parties, on top of that windswept Hill.

David sent in some other images which can be seen on the other Pepperbox posts here.

Harry Harrison, in his book Dreaming in Yellow, suggested that the first People From Pepperbox free party at Pepperbox Hill took place the same weekend as Torpedo Town 1990. However, one of our commenters says there were more before this but that ‘Other parties preceded this one, albeit on a smaller scale, with clubbers coming from Bournemouth and Southampton.’ Thanks Oli!

An anonymous organiser gave us this tipoff. He…

was … involved with the”Pepperbox party’s”under the guise of”People From Pepperbox”,on the first occasion I was the first to arrive on site, where there was a B,B,C, radio transmitter vehicle,that was relaying a recital from Salisbury Cathedral, I made them aware of what was happening that everything,and they wisely decided to re-locate to a layby just down the road on the Southampton side, besides our own D,J,,North& South from Bournemouth, it was for many the first time that that we had the pleasure of”D,I,Y,,… there was no tent,and no admission charge,,, approximately 5,000 people attended according to the local papers (Salisbury Journal),where it made the front page

The second party is here, August 25th Total Recall party is here, the party at Barton Stacey can be found here, and here is the post for the Ley Line Lunatics do.

UPDATE 8/1/22:

Some confusion about the date for this one. Some are saying that it was the end of November, but one newspaper article (coming to this page soon!) published on Tuesday 10th December indicates that the party took place on 7th December.

A Spirals document entitled SPIRAL TRIBE’S CALENDAR OF POLICE HARRASSMENT AT FREE PARTIES – 1991-1992, still accessible via Wayback Machine, describes the bust at the end:

9.12.91– ASCOT FREE FESTIVAL, BERKS.

Police raid site during departure of sound systems. 3 arrests for ‘possession of controlled drugs’ – vitamin pills and tobacco.

NO CHARGE

Here is a transcription of News Of The World* article on this event:

TICKET TO RAVE

5,000 DELUGE SITE FOR ILLEGAL BASH

Chris Pharo reports

THE organisers of a wild rave party which attracted 5,000 youngsters, many dabbling with drugs, could have coined in £100,000 in advance ticket sales – the News can reveal. 

More than 600 people, among them Prince Andrew, protested to police, jamming the 999 emergency line as the party raved on for 24 hours.

It began at midnight on Saturday, when new age travellers with a group of mystery organisers set up a massive sound and lights system on the Staravala [sic] site off Kings Ride in Ascot.

Within minutes, the huge eight-foot tall speakers were pounding out music while hypnotic lights swirled across the site. 

By 3 am in the morning, some 5,000 partygoers, with some 2000 cars, had deluged the site reducing the handful of police officers sent to keep an eye on the illegal bash to mere car park attendants trying to keep the traffic off the roads.

Drink and drugs flowed,… but officers were powerless to act for fear of being lynched by the massive crowds.

Meanwhile, residents from all over the local area, including some living as far away as Martins, Heron and North Ascot, were swamping police stations with protest calls.

It seems the music was so loud that it blanketed nearby homes and Heatherwood Hospital just 500 yards away and instead shook windows and turned the stomachs of helpless locals up to a mile-and- a-half away.

Environmental health officers from Brucknell Forest Borough Council were also called to the scene, but were forced to remain incognito and powerless to act because police were so vastly outnumbered by the crowds.

Repeated requests for the sound to be turned down were ignored as the party raved on into Sunday morning. 

The calls of protest continued and even Prince Andrew, driving past the site towards his home at Sunninghill Park, stopped and asked what was going on and what action police officers proposed to take to stop the bash.

A police 999 operator was telling callers that if nothing could be done to help Prince Andrew, nothing could be done to help them.

The party raged until midnight on Sunday, when crowds began to dissipate.

Police then took the opportunity of storming what was left of the party, making seven arrests and demanding the music be turned off.

All the arrests were for drugs related offences. In the moments after the police task force of around 25 officers stormed the site, the mobile disco had been spirited away by the shadowy figures of the rave.

Local residents told the News of the torture that the rave caused.

Mr Alfred Bye said: “It went on all night and day. They were even dancing in the  road. The police must stop this in the future and I’m sure it will happen again. I had some of them knocking on my door and asking to use the phone. I told them they’d get a boot up the backside from me.

Mr Gerry Archer, who lives in Martins Heron, said: “The music made my stomach churn. I had no sleep and have now written to Andrew MacKay, MP, demanding he takes urgent action to get Government legislation that gives the police the power and resources to stop these things.

A spokesman for Bracknell Forest Borough Council said officers would demand that the landowners, the Crown Estate Commissioners, cured [sic] the site by the weekend and ousted the new age hippies illegally camped there.

Land agents were thought to have begun high court action on Monday to do just that.

Inspector Andy Steel, of Windsor Police, who mounted the police operation and raid on Sunday, said: “We fear they are already planning another event at the weekend. We will support the council’s demands to get the site properly secured and we have developed a contingency plan should that fail.”

A police source told the News that young people from London and Bristol had made up the majority of the party-goers and that some of the tickets for the rave had been sold at £20 each prior to Saturday night.

* If you are too young to remember News of the World, it was one of the crapper tabloid rags of the era. See if you can spot the parts of the story that are inaccurate bullshit

And here is a second newspaper article, not sure which paper:

POLICE HELPLESS AS 5,000 ROCK THE NIGHT AWAY

By Jim Stevens

HUNDREDS of residents besieged the police with complaints as 5,000 people danced the night away at an illegal party just outside Bracknell.

But police and environmental health officers could only stand and watch as thousands of revellers turned up at the old Staravia site, off Kings Ride, Ascot, on Saturday night.

Prince Andrew even got caught up in the chaos. Buckingham Palace said he drove past the site while the party was raging, but could not confirm national newspaper reports that he stopped to ask police what was being done to stop it. 

Police were massively outnumbered as more than 5,000 people who arrived in their droves for the party organised by New Age Travellers, who have been camped on the site for the last week and a half.

Deafening music from two sound systems in the back of vans pounded out from 10.30pm until just after midnight on Monday morning, when the number of revellers had dwindled to several hundred.

Drugs were freely available inside three dilapidated marquees, including ecstasy, cannabis, amphetamines and cocaine.

Police switchboards were jammed with more than 150 complaints from people living as far afield as Martins Heron.

After police and environmental health officers moved in on Monday morning there were seven arrests for drug and theft related offences on the Crown Estate land.

This is the fourth successive weekend rave in the Bracknell and Crowthorne area. 

There was a smaller party on the Staravia site the week before and two previous parties at different points on the Devils Highway, in Crowthorne.

At the Staravia party’s peak, during the early hours of Sunday morning, there were up to 2,000 cars on the 40 acre site and a constant stream of between 10 and 15 cars queuing to get in.

Entry was free, although some people clearly came with tickets, police said. The lack of police manpower meant they were unable to safely accompany environmental health officers onto the site and ask the travellers to turn the music off.

“Bracknell borough’s assistant environmental services officer Steve Loudoun said: “When we went in at about lam on Sunday morning we realised it was a rather large event. Our powers to do anything are non existent without the back up of the police.”

On Sunday afternoon the police and council officers made another effort to negotiate with the New Age Travellers, but to no avail. Their main problem was being able to reach the sound system which was surrounded by a mass of people.

The music was finally switched off just after midnight on Monday morning when 20 police officers entered the site with council officers.

Inspector Andy Steel, who was in charge of the police operation, said: “If we had had 200 officers we still would have had problems.

“‘We had sufficient manpower to cover the police area but with an event like that you cannot dip into an endless pool.” He added: “We are aware of the complaints and we did everything we humanly could to control the party.’ “If we did anything pre-emptive, injuries may well have occured, not only to people there but to officers. “We may well have had serious problems if we had gone in at any time on Saturday evening or Sunday morning.”

Despite the recent wave of popular rave parties police are anxious to remain vigilant and do all that is possible to stop them.

Sergeant Steve Huckin, assistant chief press officer for the Thames Valley Police, said: “We do not really want to stop people having fun and enjoying themselves. We are not killjoys. But we are concerned because of the nature of the parties. They are unlicensed and do not have a public entertainments licence, which means they do not have all the protection of fire and safety regulations that a licence holder has. And there is a risk of people getting injured.”

With people also trying to peddle drugs at these parties the police were also concerned, he said. “The chief constables intention is to carry on taking action, even with the resource implications, to stop parties, prevent people being put at risk and minimise disruption to the community.”

Bracknell borough council will now be pressing for a change to existing legislation., giving them stronger powers to clamp down on parties. The landowners of the site were hoping to evict the travellers this week.

Here’s a third article, this one from the Sun was published on Tuesday, December 10, 1991.

Andrew In Rave Snarl-Up

By JANE McCORMICK

PRINCE  Andrew was caught up in the chaos as police tried to break up a 5,000-strong acid house party, it was revealed last night.

Andrew, stuck in a huge traffic jam, pulled up and asked an officer: “What on earth is going on?”

The prince was driving past the illegal rave at Ascot, Berks, on the way to his Sunninghill Park home two miles away. 

Blast

Police failed to stop the party in a 40-acre field, which blasted music for 24 hours at the weekend.

Inspector Andy Steel said: “The Duke of York was driving past the site.

“He stopped to find out what was being done about it.”

Police eventually broke up the party and arrested seven people for drug offences.

NB This post refers to the second party at this site, for the earlier do, please read this post: https://freepartypeople.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/saturday-23rd-november-1991-free-party-at-staravia-factory-ascot-berkshire/

More from Snufkin:

That Ascot party was awesome. Last day of November 1991 and it was cold, minus ten at least I’d say. We had been living there ten days or so, on the site of a demolished jet engine factory called Staravia. The site had been used for storing  pea gravel so there were mounds of the stuff everywhere and huge ruts frozen solid.

… Easygroove turned up with the whole Circus Warp crew and added their tent onto our shambles. Spirals turned up later and they had to stay out in the cold. I remember walking away from the party at one point, tripping my tits off I turned back to look. There were 5000 people raving in a bodged together tent and the heat of their bodies formed a fog around the tend, which pulsed and throbbed with the lights. As I watched, the fog sat up on its haunches, like something ethereal out of ghostbusters, smiled a snaggletooth smile at me, winked and then settled back down again, curling itself around the party contentedly. No, really!

I can’t remember how long we partied for, maybe til tuesday, it got pretty twisted by the end. I had the burner going in my trailer all the way through and the site was big enough that it was possible to sleep now and then, but I don’t remember too much sleeping..

Here’s a map: http://wikimapia.org/9626663/Spiral-Tribe-Rave

Thanks again for the nice long comment Snufkin. Does anyone else remember this at all? Any photos?

Update– The Spiral Tribe do at Rats Run/Longstock Free Festival, Hampshire was on the same weekend.

Shout going out to watermouse who alerted us to this first video, thanks! And an even bigger shout out to dj jenjen (aka mis-chief) who shot both videos