IT WAS unfortunate that due to the Covid pandemic, this year’s Stonehenge Summer Solstice (which brings around 10,000 people to Stonehenge every year) was once again cancelled.
With Stonehenge in mind, I recently had the pleasure of attending a superb event at the Winchester Gate pub organised by the ‘Poetika’ group. The guest speaker was Matt Pike who gave a superb presentation entitled “Wally, Stonehenge Free Festival and the Beanfield”.
Bygone Salisbury this week returns to the Stonehenge Free Festival of 1976 where the Salisbury Journal reported, “Stonehenge once more belongs to the tourists. Gone are the coils of barbed wire and the hippies and rock fans who, for a fortnight, turned the land nearby into a kind of medieval encampment. But with them, too, have gone the excitement of the music, the gaiety of the bright-coloured kites fluttering against the clear sky, and the romance of the encampment by night, with the crowds treading their way between the garishly lit stages and the dimmer glow of the campfires.”