The Village Pump Festival is a folk music festival that takes place near

Trowbridge Trowbridge ( ) is the county town of Wiltshire, England, on the River Biss in the west of the county. It is near the border with Somerset and lies southeast of Bath, 31 miles (49 km) southwest of Swindon and 20 miles (32 km) southeas ...

, England. It has its roots years ago in a barn at the Lamb Inn, Trowbridge, and later moved a few miles outside the town to Stowford Manor Farm at

Farleigh Hungerford Farleigh Hungerford () is a village within the civil parish of Norton St Philip in the Mendip district, in Somerset, England, 9 miles southeast of Bath, 3½ miles west of Trowbridge on A366, between Trowbridge and Radstock in the valley of the ...

. The music covers a variety of genres from

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fo ...

and

roots A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients. Root or roots may also refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusing ...

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

and Ceilidh with a variety of other entertainment including a family field, with puppetry and

story telling Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural ...

Background

The event arose from the

folk club A folk club is a regular event, permanent venue, or section of a venue devoted to folk music and traditional music. Folk clubs were primarily an urban phenomenon of 1960s and 1970s Great Britain and Ireland, and vital to the second British folk r ...

of the same name founded in

in 1970 and the annual festival held there until 1984, when it moved to Stowford Manor Farm. Prior to 2010, all events took place in marquees and the compact site includes camping, car parking, three separate stages plus children's tent, two beer tents and a myriad of trade stalls selling items from all over the world. 2010 saw the introduction of an outdoor main stage (the Moonshine Stage), with two marquees (the Horizon and Old Rosie Stages), and several additional small stages and undercover performance areas.

History

The folk club of the same name was founded by Pat Drinkwater in 1970 in a former storeroom at the rear of The Lamb pub in Mortimer Street,

. Early performers included

Maddy Prior Madelaine Edith Prior MBE (born 14 August 1947) is an English folk singer, best known as the lead vocalist of Steeleye Span. She was born in Blackpool and moved to St Albans in her teens. Her father, Allan Prior, was co-creator of the police dr ...

and

Tim Hart Tim Hart (9 January 1948 – 24 December 2009) was an English folk singer and multi-instrumentalist, best known as a founding member of British folk rock band Steeleye Span. Early years Tim Hart was born in Lincoln, England, but moved to St ...

Keith Christmas Keith Peter Christmas (born 13 October 1946, Wivenhoe, near Colchester, Essex, England) is an English singer and songwriter. He attended Bath University to read architecture but, because the Architecture School was, at that time, based in Ki ...

Dick Gaughan Richard Peter Gaughan (born 17 May 1948) is a Scottish musician, singer and songwriter, particularly of folk and social protest songs. He is regarded as one of Scotland's leading singer-songwriters. Early years Gaughan was born in Glasgow's Roy ...

and

Stéphane Grappelli Stéphane Grappelli (; 26 January 1908 – 1 December 1997, born Stefano Grappelli) was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the fi ...

. Many others later played there. The first festival was held in 1974 before moving to Stowford Farm,

, in 1980, under the direction of Alan Briars and Dave Newman. Newman died in 2005 and Briars in 2007. In 2006 a group of enthusiasts relaunched the Village Pump folk club at The Lamb. The 2011 event was called off, the first time this had happened, because of difficulties in obtaining ticket revenues from the online transaction company. Trowbridge Village Pump Festival Limited, the company that ran the festival, did not find out until late January 2010 that the online transaction provider had sold on that part of their business to another company. The new owner viewed festivals as very risky and applied conditions to the release of the ticket revenue, i.e. the monies would not be released until three months after the festival. It was by that time too late move to another provider, and the company shareholders voted to suspend the event. Many of the original members decided to resurrect the festival under a new name. The 2012 Village Pump Folk Festival took place at White Horse Country Park, Westbury on 20–22 July 2012 with

Show of Hands Show of Hands is an English acoustic roots/ folk duo formed in 1986 by singer-songwriter Steve Knightley (guitars, mandolin, mandocello, cuatro) and composer and multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer (vocals, guitars, violin, viola, mandolin, mando ...

as festival patrons. It was covered by FromeFM. Following disappointing ticket sales in 2015 and 2016, the organisers decided to take the Village Pump Folk Festival into voluntary liquidation. The 2017 festival was initially cancelled, but later a smaller festival was planned. Another group of volunteers, including several previous committee members, organised a 2018 festival at Stowford Manor Farm. In 2019 the organisation was unable to meet Wiltshire Council's requirements for the event licence, and in 2020 the festival could not be held due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

2010 line up

Moonshine Main Stage:

2009 line up

2008 line up

2007 line up

2006 line up

Dana Gillespie and her London Blues Band

2005 line up

2004 line up

Gallery

File:Alan Briars 1991.jpg, Alan Briars (right) supervising the main stage in 1991 File:Village Pump Festival site, 1991.jpg, Site of the 1991 festival, with main tent to right and manor house to rear File:Late Evening, Trowbridge Village Pump Festival - geograph.org.uk - 990574.jpg, The second field in 2008

References

External links

* {{official, http://www.trowbridgefestival.co.uk/ Music festivals in Somerset Music festivals in Wiltshire Folk festivals in the United Kingdom Music festivals established in 1973 Trowbridge 1973 establishments in England