Glastonbury festival in BR days.

[RPI]

I've been part of the Revenue Protection team in Wessex/First Great Western/GWR for nigh on 20 years now, obviously this means I've worked at Castle Cary a fair few times for Glastonbury in this time, in this time I've seen all sorts of interesting workings in relation to the festival including the Wessex Pink class 31's, top and tailed class 67's to name two.

Does anyone have any info or any stories from what went on in BR days though?

 

[Gloster]

As far as I can remember, as long as the signal box was open there were no special trains, staffing, etc. at Cary. A few stragglers may have turned up, but even into the nineties I reckon it was very road orientated. (And I expect that the railway was not altogether sorry not to have to deal with the coaches after they had had large amounts of Somerset mud trampled into them.) I have a feeling, based on no direct evidence, that the attendees at the festival have changed over the years: fewer go-all-over-the-country-to-any-festival types, who sort their transport out, and more once-or-twice-a-year-big-event types who want things provided for them. (As said, that is just an opinion.)

 

[30907]

Does anyone have any info or any stories from what went on in BR days though?

I was a SR Enquiry clerk around 1980 and don't recall festivals being mentioned in our weekly event briefings or in STNs (yes, I know Castle Cary wasn't SR then...), so I concur with Gloster.

Not strictly BR, but I've recently seen on SM photos of the preserved Hastings unit being used as a crowdbuster in 2000.

 

[RPI]

I was a SR Enquiry clerk around 1980 and don't recall festivals being mentioned in our weekly event briefings or in STNs (yes, I know Castle Cary wasn't SR then...), so I concur with Gloster.

Not strictly BR, but I've recently seen on SM photos of the preserved Hastings unit being used as a crowdbuster in 2000.

I've seen pictures of the Hastings set now you mention it.

Just finished on early turn there today, was refreshing to see that even SWR had strengthened their services through there today.

 

[WesternLancer]

This is an interesting question. Only a couple of days ago a conversation at home was long the lines of 'I do not recall Glastonbury festival being such a big deal back in the 80s'. This was in terms of the BBC and other news coverage which is quite extensive and of course quite a bit of footage is broadcast - I don't think that happened in the 80s. At that time I suspect I'd have got a sense of the vent more from the NME than from the TV.

In the 80s I was a teenager - and I think the the whole event was much smaller (although not that small obv) and I suspect/wonder if more as a proportion of the audience was perhaps younger than it is today (total guess on that however) - since the 90s, and the clamp down on entry without paying etc I suspect the festival has become much more expensive to get a ticket in relative terms, and the audience proportionately older, with the means to pay to get in.

In c1985 a friend and I toyed with the idea of going but didn't reckon we could afford the fares and associated costs of the whole idea so the plan never progressed. I wonder if more people hitched there then? Of course it was cheaper to run a car then for young people too - as the ability to run an old banger was more feasible than it seems to be for people of similar age today - with insurance prices very different I believe.

Would there have been any system to get from Castle Cary to the site in the 80s? In fact what is the system now? shuttle buses - the station does not seem that close.

Maybe the existing train service was adequate for the demand in those days? - pre sprinterisation what sort of trains regularly served Castle Cary in the mid 1980s or before? Would they have been longer trains typically?

 

[Gloster]

Would there have been any system to get from Castle Cary to the site in the 80s? In fact what is the system now? shuttle buses - the station does not seem that close.

Maybe the existing train service was adequate for the demand in those days? - pre sprinterisation what sort of trains regularly served Castle Cary in the mid 1980s or before? Would they have been longer trains typically?

I can only write of the situation up to 1984, but there was no sign of changes on the way then. Getting from Cary to Glastonbury would have been by taxi, although I don’t remember there ever being queues of taxis at Cary: the odd one might stop on the off-chance if it was passing when a train was due. Otherwise you would have to ‘phone for one: there was probably a list of numbers somewhere, although I can’t remember if there was a ‘phone box. I think there was a very sparse Yeovil-Shepton Mallet bus operated by Wakes, but nothing across the levels to Glastonbury (except possibly a market-day service).

The train service was the slightly-worse-than two-hourly Bristol-Weymouth one, with most trains being DMUs. There were three down evening HSTs, while in the up direction there were two morning and one evening HST; I think Sundays was just one up evening HST. The platforms, of which there was just an Up and a Down, were not long enough for an HST and the last two coaches would be off the end. I don’t remember any strengthening of trains, but by that point the down Weymouth services weren’t very busy.

Frankly, if you were coming by rail you would choose somewhere larger, such as Bath or Bristol, as your destination station, rather than the massive metropolis of Cary. If you were coming from the west you might try Taunton or Bridgwater, and if coming from the south just possibly Westbury. But I don’t think there were nearly as many people making their way there by public transport and I think the festival was smaller.

 

[WesternLancer]

I can only write of the situation up to 1984, but there was no sign of changes on the way then. Getting from Cary to Glastonbury would have been by taxi, although I don’t remember there ever being queues of taxis at Cary: the odd one might stop on the off-chance if it was passing when a train was due. Otherwise you would have to ‘phone for one: there was probably a list of numbers somewhere, although I can’t remember if there was a ‘phone box. I think there was a very sparse Yeovil-Shepton Mallet bus operated by Wakes, but nothing across the levels to Glastonbury (except possibly a market-day service).

The train service was the slightly-worse-than two-hourly Bristol-Weymouth one, with most trains being DMUs. There were three down evening HSTs, while in the up direction there were two morning and one evening HST; I think Sundays was just one up evening HST. The platforms, of which there was just an Up and a Down, were not long enough for an HST and the last two coaches would be off the end. I don’t remember any strengthening of trains, but by that point the down Weymouth services weren’t very busy.

Frankly, if you were coming by rail you would choose somewhere larger, such as Bath or Bristol, as your destination station, rather than the massive metropolis of Cary. If you were coming from the west you might try Taunton or Bridgwater, and if coming from the south just possibly Westbury. But I don’t think there were nearly as many people making their way there by public transport and I think the festival was smaller.

Thanks for those insights, interesting to read.

I see wikipedia gives a history of the festival, which says crowd limit was supposed to be 30,000 in 1983 - and says live TV coverage not starting until 1994 with Channel 4 (though televised highlights are mentioned from the 80s onwards but I suspect they would not have been on for much time given the limited number of channels and hours of TV time to fill). Sounds like a conscious decision was taken to expand the festival's size somewhat in 1992.

 

[The Conductor]

Not Glastonbury, but I went to the 'Bath Festival' in July 1970 (great music, lousy sound system) and left around 0300 on Saturday when it started raining and I was getting tired. This was at the Bath and West Showground site at Shepton Mallet. Local coach firms were running a shuttle to Castle Cary. I remember waiting on the platform and seeing a double-headed Warship- hauled sleeper go through. I think a special to London ran, and I was certainly on a special to Birmingham (and points north?) which was Class 45/46 hauled and lightly loaded. Festiavls were a new concept then and forecasting demand might have been tricky. see https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/bA1.html- no trains though!

Sorry- 0300 Saturday should read MONDAY. No recreational drugs involved.....

Further memory joggig recalls the journey down, on a service train from Bristol TM. This was a very long string of Class 120s- I think one or more extra units were rustled up to cope with the crowds which at that stage seemed to take BR by surprise.

There is an online link to the published transport arrangements which mentions an 0400 MO special to Paddington- nothing else. https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/bathbust-transport.html

 

[EbbwJunction1]

I'm a bit unsure of the details, but I saw something on Facebook which said that a complaint had been made that there were no direct trains to Glastonbury .... !

 

[WesternLancer]

I'm a bit unsure of the details, but I saw something on Facebook which said that a complaint had been made that there were no direct trains to Glastonbury .... !

It's quite a long walk from Glastonbury to Pilton by the looks of it - tho the disused line seems to pass close to the festival site at Pilton - did Pilton have a station? When did that route close?

 

[SWTCommuter]

It's quite a long walk from Glastonbury to Pilton by the looks of it - tho the disused line seems to pass close to the festival site at Pilton - did Pilton have a station? When did that route close?

West Pennard station on the Burnham & Evercreech branch of the Somerset and Dorset was about 1.5 miles from Worthy Farm as the crow flies.

Briefly glimpsed in this film at 3:34

 

[Anonymous10]

I've seen pictures of the Hastings set now you mention it.

Just finished on early turn there today, was refreshing to see that even SWR had strengthened their services through there today.

wish i could say the same for gwr 4 carriages but back 2 were locked out from weymouth to westbury resulting in a full and standing service in the front 2

 

[Gloster]

It's quite a long walk from Glastonbury to Pilton by the looks of it - tho the disused line seems to pass close to the festival site at Pilton - did Pilton have a station? When did that route close?

There was West Pennard about half-way between the villages of West Pennard and Pilton, and Pylle Halt on the the main road at Street on the Fosse. Both were about the same distance from the festival site. The line closed in early March 1966: don’t shout too loud or somebody will suggest reopening the whole S&D just to make it easier to travel to ‘Glasto’ (yuck, I hate that abbreviation).

 

[randyrippley]

Worthy Farm is closer to Shepton Mallet than Glastonbury
FWIW back then the main regular bus routes in the area would have been Bristol Omnibus services from Bristol and Bath serving both towns
Wakes ran between Yeovil - Castle Cary - Shepton Mallet every two hours or so, while Brutonian probably some years had a one-day-a-week market service from Bruton
You'd probably also have Royal Blues routing through both towns on a daily basis

My guess is that Bath would be the most likely railhead

 

[WesternLancer]

West Pennard station on the Burnham & Evercreech branch of the Somerset and Dorset was about 1.5 miles from Worthy Farm as the crow flies.

Briefly glimpsed in this film at 3:34

Thanks for that link - excellent excuse to watch a delightful Betjeman film - interesting to see the footage of Highbridge works in the second part of the film too. Thanks also to subsequent posters for answers to my questions.
Occurs to me that festival funding might have at least allowed some of the route to have been converted to a cycle path by now...

 

[Gloster]

Occurs to me that festival funding might have at least allowed some of the route to have been converted to a cycle path by now...

I think that a fair amount has been returned to agriculture.

 

[Taunton]

I'm probably one of the few on here who has actually travelled through the site on a train (412xx tank, 2 carriages, 2 passengers) - the alignment of the S&D branch from Evercreech to Highbridge is the main track through the site. Ivo Peters' films show how it used to be, including the train stopping at the cottage at Cockmill Crossing to deliver drinking water, middle of nowhere, which is now in the centre of things.

Castle Cary for long had no main line trains stopping at all - only Weymouth line trains. Incidentally, the station is nowhere near the little town itself, the railway being down in the valley, the town up on a hill. Then just one evening train from Paddington started serving it, and things slowly built up from there. The closest station with an all-day service to London was actually Templecombe, on the Waterloo line, but that's even further from the festival site.

In the beginning Glastonbury Festival was decidedly for oddballs, Hippies and Druids, and became slowly mainstream from there. It started with the Druids who went to Stonehenge for the summer solstice, and were in the area the following week, many with offbeat lifestyles living in groups of old dilapidated buses that they roamed the country in, which would normally come to the immediate attention of the police were they not just keen on moving them on and getting them out of the area. I've never been to the Festival itself (shame, it's still on my mythical bucket list ) but am familiar with the various traffic and attendee issues. Most locals give the roads around the location a very wide berth for the week.

 

[WesternLancer]

I think that a fair amount has been returned to agriculture.

Looking at the current OS map it does look like that might be the case actually.

I'm probably one of the few on here who has actually travelled through the site on a train (412xx tank, 2 carriages, 2 passengers) - the alignment of the S&D branch from Evercreech to Highbridge is the main track through the site. Ivo Peters' films show how it used to be, including the train stopping at the cottage at Cockmill Crossing to deliver drinking water, middle of nowhere, which is now in the centre of things.

Castle Cary for long had no main line trains stopping at all - only Weymouth line trains. Incidentally, the station is nowhere near the little town itself, the railway being down in the valley, the town up on a hill. Then just one evening train from Paddington started serving it, and things slowly built up from there. The closest station with an all-day service to London was actually Templecombe, on the Waterloo line, but that's even further from the festival site.

In the beginning Glastonbury Festival was decidedly for oddballs, Hippies and Druids, and became slowly mainstream from there. It started with the Druids who went to Stonehenge for the summer solstice, and were in the area the following week, many with offbeat lifestyles living in groups of old dilapidated buses that they roamed the country in, which would normally come to the immediate attention of the police were they not just keen on moving them on and getting them out of the area. I've never been to the Festival itself (shame, it's still on my mythical bucket list ) but am familiar with the various traffic and attendee issues. Most locals give the roads around the location a very wide berth for the week.

Thanks Taunton - must have been v interesting to travel on - I see the Betjeman film is on BBC i player in full and seems to date from 1963 (with the line carrying on until 1966?) it looks rather devoid of passengers in his film - although superbly evocative of the era - later shows the interesting flat crossing at Highbridge as he takes a goods train for a journey on the line.

What happened tot eh Highbridge works / when did that close? I couldn't find a decent reference to it on the web - tho I may not have looked hard enough!

 

[EbbwJunction1]

What happened tot eh Highbridge works / when did that close? I couldn't find a decent reference to it on the web - tho I may not have looked hard enough!

Mr W Pedia says this (my bold):
"Highbridge was also the site of the S&DJR's locomotive works, which closed in 1930 after the motive power of the line was taken over by the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), whilst its joint-venture owning partner the Southern Railway (SR) took over civil engineering and line operations. The associated small engine shed remained open until the line and station finally shut in 1966."

 

[Big Jumby 74]

What happened tot eh Highbridge works / when did that close?

EbbwJunction1 has just beaten me to it ! 1930 as said was closure date (Middleton Press book). Couple of pics I took last time I was down the branch. June '86. . Earlier that year the Down platform at Highbridge, the one where JB's train terminated in, in that short film up thread, which had a concrete extension at the Evercreech end, was still there, albeit crumbling fast. The works site was largely overgrown wasteland.

 

[WesternLancer]

Mr W Pedia says this (my bold):
"Highbridge was also the site of the S&DJR's locomotive works, which closed in 1930 after the motive power of the line was taken over by the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), whilst its joint-venture owning partner the Southern Railway (SR) took over civil engineering and line operations. The associated small engine shed remained open until the line and station finally shut in 1966."

Thanks

I located this page - looks like a local history blog - interesting pic of the works staff c1933 (from a loaned picture with a relative in it) - it's wrongly captured in my view as it says it is the station staff, but there are far too many people and they are photographed in front of the works

Somerset and Dorset Railway

The photograph above shows the staff of the railway company at Highbridge Station Circa 1933. With thanks to Mrs Valerie Luke-Cooper who gave us permission to use the photo and whose father, Regina…

capturehighbridge.wordpress.com

extracts of the text of note say:

To the east of the Highbridge Station on a piece of land bounded to the north by the line and to the south by the River Brue, the Railway Company had, around 1862 constructed a locomotive, carriage and wagon works comprehensively equipped to maintain its rolling stock. New railway engines were not built there but were maintained at the workshops where they would be re-built and have new boilers fitted. Wensley’s of Mark and Day’s of Mark Causeway carried out all foundry work. Heavy locomotive repairs were carried out at Bristol and ordinary repairs at Derby. Carriage and wagon repairs were undertaken at Highbridge, being a major part of the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway network.

It was re-organised in the 1890’s and from then until 1911 was the heyday of the works, all traffic in and out had to be moved by rail because of a complete lack of road access. Staff employed during the last quarter of the nineteenth century varied between 344 and 485, many completed less than a year’s service but others stayed for forty one to fifty years, with twenty five achieving over fifty years with the Company. Changing circumstances led to a gradual decline after 1911, though the works remained in operation for a further two decades.

and

The locomotive works officially closed on the 31st December 1929 as the economic depression hit, 300 men were made redundant, and this was a major blow for the town as the population was approximately 2000. Jobs in hand gave further employment to the works until March 1930.

.... The works buildings were stripped of equipment but remained intact but semi-derelict for many years. That is until the United States of America entered the war and part of the original railway works were used as a government store and the American Army used them extensively as a large fuel depot, supplies from here were used by their Army during the Normandy D.Day invasion. It was the U.S. Army that finally constructed the missing roads that then provided access to the buildings.

...Part of the original locomotive works was used to maintain engines using the local line and it was also a wagon repair depot; this facility gave employment until September 1955 when the building caught fire and was totally destroyed, it was never replaced.

...Today, the Walrow Industrial Estate and in particular the Caxton Furniture Factory covers the site of the Highbridge Locomotive Works; the S. & D.J.R. Station site, will shortly become a housing estate.

I think this was written in about 2010 or before. Like the pic caption it may not be 100% accurate

EbbwJunction1 has just beaten me to it ! 1930 as said was closure date (Middleton Press book). Couple of pics I took last time I was down the branch. June '86. . Earlier that year the Down platform at Highbridge, the one where JB's train terminated in, in that short film up thread, which had a concrete extension at the Evercreech end, was still there, albeit crumbling fast. The works site was largely overgrown wasteland.

Thanks for those pics.

 

[magpiespy]

I travelled to Glastonbury festival by train a few times between 1992 and 2000. I do not have any notes, but for what it is worth I can remember a couple of things about the journeys home on the Monday.

There was a shuttle bus service to Castle Cary from the site, which worked well. In 1992 I left on a set of MkI/II hauled by a blue 47 heading somewhere North, or somewhere I could get a connection to the North at least, which must surely have been a special. I cannot recall the details of the journey at all unfortunately, beyond my relief at finding a clean toilet!

On another occasion, around 1998, I drove to Westbury, parked in the station car park, and took the train in from there. On the way home, I asked for a single to Westbury from the temporary ticket office set up iwhat appeared to be a field baside Castle Cary station, where the shuttle buses parked. I got dog's abuse from the ticket seller for trying to dodge my fare, as she suspected I was going further afield! I think the Westbury train I boarded was a Sprinter and it was lightly loaded, with crowds remaining on the platform who were directed by the staff to wait for longer distance trains.

Out of BR days now I know, but the last time I went in 2000, I travelled home to London on an HST which I imagine was a normal service train.

 

[Taunton]

Highbridge station and yard to the end in 1966 was dilapidation, which doubtless set in with the works closure in 1930. A normal 2-platform wayside station on the WR main line side, the S&D side set at about 60 degrees had I think 5 platforms, which could have allowed a different platform for each of the departures in a day to Evercreech. Most of them seemed to lack any canopies. With the dearth of passengers the principal traffic on the passenger trains was parcels from the Clarks shoe factory at Street, a suburb of Glastonbury, which not only regularly filled each guards' compartment but often led to additional GUV vans being attached, with odd extra ones laying around Highbridge sidings. The old Works buildings seemed much still there to the end, in ruins and with the roofs fallen in.

Glastonbury station, in best Somerset tradition, was the furthest-out building of the town, down a lane, and nowhere near the centre. The line made quite an apparent detour to circumnavigate the well-known Tor.

 

[Gloster]

The line through Highbridge S&D station and yard was reduced to a single line after the passenger service was withdrawn, but milk traffic (worked from Taunton) to Bason Bridge continued until the 1970s: this section of line was closed at the beginning of October 1972. Part of the site of the station and yard at Highbridge was used from April 1971 to early 1972 for deliveries of fly ash for M5 construction works, with a loop siding and hopper being constructed. (Information mostly from Section 18 of Cooke’s track plans from 1975.)

 

[Taunton]

There is a further Betjeman film about the line, here, a substantial re-edit it seems of the one linked above with some shared shots, but with an extended walk around the old Highbridge Works. Made in 1962, same year I made my one trip on the line. Round about the 15/16 minute mark they are passing through the festival site, which is between Pylle and West Pennard stations. The Glastonbury Blue Gate, on the A37 road (used to be a hump-backed bridge there over the line but long removed), is on the site of Pylle station.

 

[Ianigsy]

I have a feeling that it was only into the 1990s that there started to be concerns about how people were actually getting to the festival- once New Age travellers made it into the public consciousness, police forces started to take an interest in the condition of some of the clapped-out old buses and ambulances being driven around - and festivals started selling +coach tickets so that Somerset didn’t spend a week being brought to a standstill.

 

[WesternLancer]

There is a further Betjeman film about the line, here, a substantial re-edit it seems of the one linked above with some shared shots, but with an extended walk around the old Highbridge Works. Made in 1962, same year I made my one trip on the line. Round about the 15/16 minute mark they are passing through the festival site, which is between Pylle and West Pennard stations. The Glastonbury Blue Gate, on the A37 road (used to be a hump-backed bridge there over the line but long removed), is on the site of Pylle station.

That looks much closer / same as the version on BBC i Player I mentioned above, which I assume is the original BBC film edit.

I have a feeling that it was only into the 1990s that there started to be concerns about how people were actually getting to the festival- once New Age travellers made it into the public consciousness, police forces started to take an interest in the condition of some of the clapped-out old buses and ambulances being driven around - and festivals started selling +coach tickets so that Somerset didn’t spend a week being brought to a standstill.

This sounds familiar from my memories of that period too.

 

[Taunton]

I have a feeling that it was only into the 1990s that there started to be concerns about how people were actually getting to the festival- once New Age travellers made it into the public consciousness, police forces started to take an interest in the condition of some of the clapped-out old buses and ambulances being driven around - and festivals started selling +coach tickets so that Somerset didn’t spend a week being brought to a standstill.

The Avon & Somerset police, who had the longest experience of this lot (along with Wiltshire, who had to deal with them the previous week at Stonehenge), had a policy of just moving them on out of their area, as long as no mainstream crimes were committed, because taking the vehicles away for being dangerous/no tax etc just then gave huge problems to the social services.

 

[WesternLancer]

The Avon & Somerset police, who had the longest experience of this lot (along with Wiltshire, who had to deal with them the previous week at Stonehenge), had a policy of just moving them on out of their area, as long as no mainstream crimes were committed, because taking the vehicles away for being dangerous/no tax etc just then gave huge problems to the social services.

You can see the strategy - although at the 'Battle of the Beanfield' in 1985 things seemed to be rather different in Wilts.

Battle of the Beanfield - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Most independent eyewitness accounts of the events relate that the police used violent tactics against men, women and children, including pregnant women; and purposely damaged the vehicles used by the convoy

 

[Taunton]

Stonehenge Solstice was a precursor to Glastonbury, as was the Royal Bath & West Show, one of the most mainstream and remaining rural annual fairs, which takes place in a surprisingly permanent and well-established showgrounds just to the east of the Glastonbury site, at the same time of year (though nowadays of course organised not to clash).

For those who don't know the South-West, there are a longstanding range of indigents (Druids; New Age Travellers; Hippies; traditional Tramps etc) to be found in summer. Farmers around Taunton made use of them at harvest time for extra labour, or undesirable jobs like cleaning out drains, and those I knew were always insistent to pay them full farm labourer wages and not take advantage of them. I think they have however been pretty well cleared out of Glastonbury; £60 just to park on site before admission, and some elegant "Glamping" professionally erected tented areas at about £10,000 for the week!