Boomtown (also known as Boomtown Fair) is a British music festival held annually on the Matterley Estate in South Downs National Park, near Winchester, Hampshire. It was first held in 2009 and has been held at its current site since 2011, and runs during the second week of August each year. The event features a diverse lineup of live bands, electronic music DJs, MCs, speakers, and theatrical performers across many genres.
Each yearly event, known as a chapter, expands on the story line from the previous year, told through the set design, immersive theatre performances, and many forms of alternate reality games. The 1,250 acre festival site is split into 8 fictional districts, each with a distinct design and identity, and housing more than 50 hidden stages run by independent artists, collectives, and record labels, alongside 12 main stages run by Boomtown. The large scale of the build and its infrastructure requires six weeks of construction, and a month of disassembly.[1]
The festival is run by Boomtown Festival UK Limited, partially owned by Live Nation UK (18%),[2] and originally founded by Chris Rutherford and Luke 'Lak' Mitchell, both from Bristol.[3] Since 2020, the event has a licensed capacity of 76,999 from Winchester City Council, but is currently still limited to 66,000 pending permission from the South Downs National Park Authority.[4]
History
2000s
Boomtown Fair was created when Rutherford and Mitchell, who had grown up in the festival scene,[3][1]
decided that music festivals lacked atmosphere, and that many genres were being overlooked.[5] The first chapter, Boomtown Begins, took place from 7-9 August 2009 and was held at the Speech House Hotel, Coleford, Gloucestershire. The second event saw the festival move to the Stowe Landscape Gardens in Buckingham, Buckinghamshire and the third festival was relocated to the Matterley Estate in Winchester, where it has remained.
2010s
Between 2012 and 2014, The Arcadia Spider featured as a main stage, before being replaced by the custom Banghai Palace in 2015.[6] The 2016 fair saw further expansion with Sector 6 in the Temple Valley area, introduced as a way to even the spread of bass-heavy music across the site.[1]
In 2018, festival organisers hoped to increase the capacity of the festival to 80,000, but the application was rejected. Instead they were allowed to open a day early, but only if attendees arrived using 'sustainable transport', in coaches, shuttle bus or cars with more than three people.[7]
Hippie Highway, a central route through the site, at night in 2019
The 2019 fair introduced the new Area 404 district in place of Sector 6 providing the festivals home for techno and acid house music. The event was focused around the "Leave No Trace" mantra. Encouraging attendees to take their rubbish and camping equipment with them as they leave, and banning single-use plastics from all of the on-side stalls. As a result of this push, the festival saw a 50% reduction in tents and equipment left behind.[8]
2020s
COVID-19 Pandemic
The 2020 event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[9] After an announcement from Prime Minister Boris Johnson on 25 February 2021 announcing the roadmap for the removal of restrictions in England, public confidence in the 2021 festival season increased.[10] Following this news, many festivals in the UK saw a huge increase in ticket sales, with the organizers of the Reading and Leeds festivals stating they were 'very confident' the summer's events would go ahead.[11][12] By Thursday 25 February, all remaining Boomtown tickets had sold out; 48,000 in total.[13][14]
However, on 20 April 2021, Boomtown announced that it would be cancelled for the second year in a row. Organisers cited the lack of a government insurance scheme to cover COVID-19-related cancellations of music festivals, stating that "for an independent event as large and complex as Boomtown, this means a huge gamble into an eight-figure sum to lose if we were to venture much further forward, and then not be able to go ahead due to COVID."[15] The organisers planned to hold a smaller event known as Boom Village, but was cancelled due to safety concerns over rising numbers of new COVID-19 cases.[16]
As a result of cancellations from the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival corporation's total equity had dropped from more than £2.1 million in October 2019 to just £151,879 in October 2021.[17]
Post-COVID
The festival returned in 2022 with a smaller layout, with a decreased number of districts and stages, from 12 main stages (previously 25) and 8 districts (down from 14). The majority of entertainment was moved into the bowl, with the campsites onto the flat land that surrounds the bowl. Two new main stages were introduced with all other main stages not returning: Origin as the main dance stage, and Grand Central as the main live music stage.[18]
The festival also adopted a new lineup policy whereby most performers were announced only days before the event, this coincided with a drop of typical headliner bookings. On 17 August 2022, Boomtown co-founders Luke Mitchell and Christopher Rutherford released a statement confirming that the festival, previously the largest independent in the UK, had sold a 45% stake including 18% to Live Nation UK, citing citing increasing financial pressure post-COVID.[19]
On 29 June 2023, for the 15th anniversary of the festival, Boomtown announced The Prodigy would be headlining the fair on Sunday, the first headline announcement since the change in policy.[20] The Friday during the festival, the band cancelled all upcoming performances after vocalist Maxim suffered a back injury.[21] The Prodigy was replaced by Chase and Status.
On 6 December 2024, Boomtown launched the 2025 event, including announcing the first re-expansion outside of the bowl, with Old Town moving to Hilltop, and the introduction of two new main dance stages - The Lions Gate (replacing Origin), and Hydro for techno and house music. The fair also returned to lineup announcements in advance for the first time in five years, with a first wave announcement.[22]
Layout
The bottom of The Stairs, a route between Downtown and Hilltop
The 1,250 acre greenfield festival site is split into a few main areas:[23]
the Temple Valleyvalley which splits the spite diagonally;
and the Hilltop area which extends across the crest of the hill that is the mid-ground between these two areas – it is also the geographical centre of the site.
The main entertainment is contained within the Downtown and Hilltop areas with attendees taking either Hippie Highway (a large, steep hill) or The Stairs (a temporary staircase structure) to travel between the two.
Each of the 8 districts has a distinct identity, with unique set design and music genres on show. Each district has at least one main stage, alongside small and medium size venues integrated into the street sets.[24] The festival contains 12 main stages and 50 additional hidden venues.[25]
The largest main stages (currently Grand Central, Lions Gate, and Hydro) differ from the others as they are designed to accommodate crowds in the tens of thousands, with vast stage sets at the centre with bars, toilets, and accessible viewing platforms around the area.
A number of stages feature within the natural features of the sites. The 'forest party' stages are set within the woods under tree canopies, with sand flooring and large permanent wooden structures. The Lions Den stage was also set within a natural amphitheatre, but is currently unused.
Almost all of the site accessible to the public that is not part of the entertainment area is used for camping, with no barriers or further security between camping areas and stages. There are two campsite 'villages' in the largest camps with large communal fire pits alongside traditional festival and spiritual healing activities.
The two main entrances are on the far east and west sides of the site for those travelling by car and public transport respectively. On the south side of the site is the entrance for camper vans along with the camper van field. The north side and north-east corner of the site is primarily out of bounds staff and crew areas.
View from the top of Hippie Highway, the main route between the areas of Downtown and Hilltop (2019)
The grounds have been the home of a number of music festivals and concerts over the years, including Creamfields in its inaugural year of 1998, Homelands from 1999 till 2005 and Glade Festival in 2009. Because of this long history with a number of iconic events, many consider the grounds to be firmly entrenched in the roots of many notable acts and genres, especially with regards to dance music, underground dance music and other electronic music.[27]
Elsewhere on-site, the motocross track within the Matterley Basin has in the past held the British round of the World Championship, as well as the Motocross of Nations.[28] The site has also hosted the Tough Mudder endurance test series.[29]
Donations to various charities are made each year from the festival's profits;[55] in 2015 these were the Energy Revolution Initiative, Winchester Youth Counselling and Trinity Winchester. Tickets are donated to charity for raffles and competitions, and the festival works with Oxfam, MyCauseUK and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance who provide stewards. The festival also produces a fundraising CD at Christmas.[56] Since 2014, the festival have provided free children's arts & craft workshops at a pop-up event in nearby Winchester.[57]
For the 2019 event, Boomtown partnered with TreeSisters, an organization focusing on reforestation with women, to plant one tree for every ticket bought (48,000). After the event, it was announced that the partnership planted 71,725 trees.[58]
Incidents and deaths
During the 2011 festival, Deborah Jeffery, 45 from Winchester suffered a fatal heart attack after taking ecstasy.[59]
In 2013, Ellie Rowe, 18 from Glastonbury, Somerset, died after consuming alcohol and Ketamine. The incident occurred the same day Ketamine was reclassified from a class C to class B drug in the UK.[60] In the years following the tragedy, Wendy Teasdill, Ellie's mother, has become an advocate for on-site drug testing, saying the facilities may have saved her life.[61]
The following year, Lisa Williamson, 31, from Hereford, was found hanged in a campsite toilet after using drugs.[62]
In 2016, Olivia Christopher, 18, from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, was discovered dead in her tent after a suspected drug overdose. It is believed she had consumed a cocktail of cocaine, Ketamine, LSD and MDMA and alcohol. The police seized £79,000 of drugs at the festival, with an additional £55,000 worth being placed in amnesty bins at the gates.[63] The same year, a discarded cigarette started a fire which destroyed more than 80 cars.[64]
In the weeks leading up to the 2017 event, the construction of the city was hampered by bad weather, which contributed to delays at the gates, with some guests queuing for up to 10 hours to enter the site. The rest of the event proceeded without incident.[65]
In 2019, the festival saw very high winds, causing widespread damage to tents in all camping areas, as a result of fencing barriers blown onto the grounds. In addition, the Relic main-stage stage was closed during a performance by Shy FX after a piece of debris from the stage was blown onto the crowd. All subsequent acts that day were moved to the Lion's Den stage. The Relic stage re-opened the next day. No injuries were reported.[66]
In 2024, man in his 20s died after a "medical incident" at the festival on the evening of Saturday 10 August.[67]
^"The Matterley Basin". The Matterley Estate. Archived from the original on 18 February 2020. Retrieved 27 July 2021.
^"The Matterley Estate". The Matterley Estate. Archived from the original on 16 February 2020. Retrieved 27 July 2021. The official website for Matterley Estate, home of the Matterley Bowl and hosts of Boomtown Festival, Tough Mudder and Juniper Leisure.
