When most people think of Glastonbury, they’re thinking about the world’s most famous music festival. But of course, Glastonbury Festival takes its name from the town of Glastonbury, seven miles down the road from Worthy Farm.
Glastonbury town is no ordinary corner of Middle England. The high street is a technicolour whirlwind of witchcraft emporiums, vegan nosheries and bizarre book sellers.
Its history is – quite literally – the stuff of legend. From the first pagans that were drawn to the weirdly shaped Tor, to the ancient Romans who built a city so grand that they nicknamed it ‘Roma Seconda’ (Second Rome). From Joseph of Arimathea and the founding of Britain’s first Christian church, to the final resting place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, to Henry VII’s violent and bloody dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey. From Victorians mystics re-imagining Glastonbury as a mist-shrouded mystic paradise, to the hippie movement and the founding of Michael Eavis’s Glastonbury Festival in the 1970s. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Glastonbury’s story is how such a small town (current population 9,000) has had such a pivotal role in British history.
Scholars debate how much of the Glastonbury legend is myth rather than fact, but that scarcely seems to matter for the countless pilgrims that have been drawn to the town over the centuries. Holy Grail hunters, Wiccan witches, healers, spiritualists, musicians, writers, poets and painters have all found a home like no other here in Glastonbury.
Earlier this week, the 主播大秀 sent me to investigate the mystic origins of Glastonbury town for its . On my pilgrimage I discovered that it is Glastonbury’s historic spirit of non-conformism and love of creativity that makes it such a magical place.
Perhaps the most surprising discovery of my journey in to Glastonbury’s origins is that the success of Glastonbury Festival arguably wasn’t a fluke. In fact, Michael Eavis’s Glastonbury Festival Of Contemporary Performing Arts (to use its full title) isn’t even the first Glastonbury Festival.
In 1914, Brummie born composer Rutland Boughton founded the original Glastonbury Festival, held in the Assembly Rooms slap bang in the middle of Glastonbury town’s high street. It was after several failed attempts to set up similar events in Hertfordshire that Boughton found success in Glastonbury – largely due to the area’s connections with Holy Grail and Arthurian legends that heavily influenced his compositions.
At face value, Boughton’s event was a very different beast to the Glastonbury Festival we know and love today.
Made up of dance, literature readings, lectures and choral opera, Boughton’s Glastonbury attracted luminaries including Edward Elgar, George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Hardy. In its inaugural year, Boughton staged an opera - ‘The Immortal Hour’ – which to this day holds the world record for running an unprecedented 216 consecutive performances when the production moved to London in 1922.
But aside from the contrasting musical styles showcased at Boughton and Eavis’s Glastonbury, records show distinct similarities in the impact that both festivals had on British society. Local residents were seriously perturbed by the corduroy trousers and knickerbockers worn by Bohemians that flocked to see Boughton’s works. Chaos broke out in 1926, Boughton’s Glastonbury Festival’s final year, when his production of the Christian Nativity was heavily tinged with socialist themes - the shepherds dressed as miners and King Herod portrayed as a top hatted capitalist!
The Nativity scandal led to Boughton’s festival financiers, Clarks Shoes, withdrawing funding, and the original Glastonbury Festival was consigned to dust. But the spirit of Boughton’s Glastonbury Festival lives on in Glastonbury town today, as a place where experimentalism in the creative arts can flourish.
The modern face of Glastonbury town owes much to Michael Eavis’s Glastonbury Festival.
“When we first started in 1970, it wasn’t called Glastonbury Festival,” he told me. “We called it the Pilton Festival, because Pilton is the nearest village to Worthy Farm. It was only years later that we changed the name to Glastonbury. And you can see the impact we’ve had. There’s no way I’d have got away with putting on a festival anywhere else,” he adds. “Because this area has always welcomed non-conformists like me, and that’s been crucial to our success.”
Whether Michael Eavis’s Glastonbury Festival would have become the world’s most famous music festival without forerunners like Rutland Boughton is perhaps debateable. One thing’s for sure – it’s easy to see why both Rutland Boughton and Michael Eavis named their festivals after a town called Glastonbury.
James Ballardie is a producer, 主播大秀 Studios
- James Ballardie's film about the historical and contemporary relationship between the festival and Glastonbury Town is on 主播大秀 Two on Friday 24 June.
- Glastonbury coverage from 10pm, Friday 24 June, on 主播大秀 Two
- A full round-up of 主播大秀 Music's Glastonbury coverage is available on the
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