Ashton Court Festival : Attaraction of Belfast

The Ashton Court Festival is an outdoors music festival held annually in the grounds of Ashton Court, just outside Bristol, England, in mid-July. It is a weekend event which features a variety of local bands and national headliners. As it is mainly aimed at local residents, the festival is not widely promoted, nor are there overnight camping facilities.

The festival takes place in a large sloped clearing surrounded on three sides by woods. The main stage is placed at the bottom of the slope and the second stage in a natural amphitheatre near the entrance to the clearing. There is also a huge tent (the “Bigger Top") for “soul, funk hip-hop and jazzy sounds", marquees for world music, acoustic acts and performing arts, and the “Blackout” tent for experimental music and video, as well as a children’s area and funfair rides.

History of Ashton Court Festival

The first festival was held in 1974, and the event grew steadily through the 1970s. After a large number of arrests on site in 1980, the festival was not held again until 1983, when it was a one-day event; in 1984 a de facto two-day event was created by staging it back-to-back with a one-day WOMAD event. Since then it has grown increasingly popular. For several years it was claimed to be Europe’s biggest free festival; however, the “suggested minimum donation” for entry has now become a compulsory UK£6 entry fee for adults. The festival is typically attended by over 50,000 people on each day.

Although locals have long referred to the festival as the “Ashton Court Festival", before 2004 it was officially called the Bristol Community Festival. During the late 1980s, the Ashton Court event was only one element of a two-week-long, city-wide festival.

In 2001 the Bristol Community Festival temporarily relocated to Hengrove Park in the south of the city. Ashton Court Estate, which includes a deer park, was closed as a quarantine measure due to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease that affected the United Kingdom that year. The move caused a massive drop in attendance and a heavy financial loss, leading to debts which still hang over the organisation. This in turn has led to a more commercial style of organisation, with a compulsory entrance fee and a strict security presence around the perimeter fence, and criticism from some locals who feel the “community” nature of the festival has been lost.

The festival’s music policy has always been focused on local acts, but since the late 1990s there has been a move towards attracting national acts to headline the festival.

Headliners at Ashton Court in recent years include:

Portishead in 1998
Robert Plant, McKay and The Electric Soft Parade in 2003
The Stranglers, Goldie Lookin’ Chain and Glenn Tilbrook in 2004
Super Furry Animals, Lemon Jelly, Roni Size and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel in 2005.

In 2003 the weight and vibrations of crowds returning from the Ashton Court Festival and the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta put such a great strain on the Clifton Suspension Bridge that the Bridge Trustees decided to close the bridge to all traffic, including pedestrians, for the entirety of the festival and most of the Balloon Fiesta in 2004 and 2005. This has led to some people staying away from the Festival in protest against what they see as a narrow-minded solution.