The Wallies of Wessex were a group of people who squatted on ground close to

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connectin ...

in 1974. The Department of the Environment and the National Trust landowners started court proceedings to have the squatters evicted. The squatters, both to make a counter culture point and to protect themselves from court costs, all used aliases in court that included the name

Wally Wally may refer to: Music * Wally (band), British prog rock band ** ''Wally'' (album), a 1974 album by Wally * ''La Wally'', an opera by Alfredo Catalani Other uses *Wally (given name), a list of people and fictional characters *WALLY, a propose ...

. They lost the case and had to move a few feet to an alternative site, but the case was reported in the national press. The Wallies were involved in the organisation of the 1976 Trentishoe Whole Earth Fair.Exmoor welcomes the pop festival 'Wallies' - Trentishoe Free Festival 1976
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Aftermath

Nigel Ayers Nigel Ayers (born 1957 in Tideswell, Derbyshire) is an English multimedia artist.Fernando Cerqueira, '' Antibothis Occultural Anthology Vol.3 p.72'' (Thisco Portugal, 2010), His sound art has included numerous audio releases and live performanc ...

states that largely through later publications by

Penny Rimbaud Penny Lapsang Rimbaud (born Jeremy John Ratter, 1943) is a writer, poet, philosopher, painter, musician and activist. He was a member of the performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and in 1972 was co-founder of the Stonehenge Free Fes ...

of the punk band

Crass Crass were an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping, Essex in 1977, who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a way of life, and a resistance movement. Crass popularised the anarcho-punk movement of the punk s ...

, the name `Wally' became increasingly identified with one man,

Wally Hope Philip Alexander Grahame Russell (9 August 1947 — 3 September 1975), known as Wally Hope, was an experimental philosopher of the UK Underground and organiser of the Windsor Free Festival and the Stonehenge Free Festival. Biography Activities ...

aka Phil Russell who had written and published much of the promotional material for the 1974 Stonehenge festival.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wallies of Wessex, The Counterculture festivals activists Squatters People associated with Stonehenge Anonymity pseudonyms