TO JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA, WANDERING ALBION while clutching his nephew’s final drinking cup, the rolling Somerset hills would have seemed the perfect setting for a New Jerusalem. To King Arthur checking in on the Holy Grail, Glastonbury Tor would have seemed the ideal spot to round-table. And to us in our own millennium, m, this hill is still the stuff of legend: just wander six miles east to farmland south of Pilton in late June, and you will find the greatest of England’s summer myths — the neo-utopian Republic of Glastonbury.
With a population a little north of 200,000, the temporary settlement of Worthy Farm is the third largest city in the South-West, trailing Bristol and Plymouth, but edging Bournemouth and Swindon. And, as cities go, the Republic of Glastonbury is unquestionably Britain’s hippest, slimmest and whitest community. The Glastonians ns forge their dreamland annually around the summer solstice — save for “fallow years” when the farmland is restored. But if you can get yourself through its imposing city walls, it will dawn quickly enough that all is not well in Glastopia.
THE REPUBLIC IN 2023 IS A FAR CRY FROM YEAR One, 1970, when Michael Eavis, inspired by Led Zeppelin’s barnstorming outdoor set in Bath, hosted the Pilton Pop, Folk and Blues Festival on his farm. The day after the death of Jimi Hendrix, some 1,500 people paid a pound to watch T(yrannosaurus) Rex — a late replacement for The Kinks — and Steamhammer.
Things scaled up the next year, when Andrew Kerr — enthused by his time atand Sir Winston’s granddaughter, Arabella Churchill, organised a free festival on the farm. Located by “dowsing the ley lines” between Glastonbury and Stonehenge, the stage was a 1/10th replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Upward of 12,000 wide-eyed wanderers came to celebrate the solstice at this truly not-for-profit jamboree.
