As we gear up for festival season, many may have forgotten the disastrous first ‘northern Glastonbury’ festival, which left its organisers bankrupt and many attendees hospitalised.
While Glastonbury debuted at Worthy Farm in Somerset in September 1970, just a month before, the UK experienced another infamous festival.
The Krumlin Festival, the first major festival of its kind, took place over five decades ago in West Yorkshire, near Halifax.
The event was meant to be the UK’s version of Woodstock, a major American festival that was held on a farm in New York the year before.
Krumlin’s lineup boasted some of the era’s biggest artists, including Pentangle, Manfred Mann Chapter 3 and Fairport Convention.
The festival’s first major issue was its unexpectedly large attendance, with 15,000 people showing up, a lesson Glastonbury seemed to have learned from, as it only admitted 1,500 people the following month.
Severe weather conditions …