Windsor Free Festival 1974
When I was writing about the 1974 Roy Harper and friends free concert in Hyde Park the other day it made me think about the Windsor Free Festival of that year. I visited the Windsor Festival that year to see what it was like, wandering around Windsor Great Park for a few hours taking in the atmosphere. I drove across from the Reading festival with a friend, tempted by the leaflets that were being given out on the Reading site. The Windsor Free Festival was held in Windsor Great Park from 1972 to 1974. It was organised by a group of hippies from London, and was the forerunner of the Free Festival movement and later events like the Stonehenge Festival. The festival was set to run for 10 days in 1974, starting over the bank holiday weekend, and continuing to the following weekend. Some friends were intending to go to Reading, across to Windsor, and then finish the festival week with the free Hyde Park event. Being a weekend hippy, I just popped across to Windsor for a visit, and went home between the weekends. I don’t recall which bands I saw but do remember the great friendly atmosphere at the festival. 
I can’t recall which day I visited, probably on the Monday, on the way home from Reading. I didn’t see any of the main bands who were, I think Hawkwind and Gong. The 1974 Windsor Free Festival was the largest, and also the most eventful, festival as a result of the police reaction to the gathering. On the Wednesday morning the police raided the festival and broke it up, amid reports of police brutality. Although I wasn’t there that day, some of my friends were, and they told me about it when I met up with them at Hyde Park on the Saturday following that eventful Wednesday. I have some flyers about the event which were given out at Hyde Park, and have copied them here. See: “Why did the cops smash the festival?”, which tells the tale of the day. 
I also have a flyer for the 1975 Windsor Free Festival, which was planned for the bank holiday week, but didn’t take place for legal reasons. I must have picked this flyer up at a festival somewhere during 1975. An alternative event took place at Watchfield, which I also attended, again after the Reading festival. It wasn’t a particularly well attended event, and had lost some of the spirit of the previous year’s festival at Windsor. Those days of the free festival and its ideals seem so long ago, and so different to the events we have now, which have become much more middle of the road, and corporate. We lost something along the way. In those days a group of hippies believed that they were building an alternative society, and I guess some of them did, and are still living it through the new age travellers movement which is the descendant of those events in the 70s.
11 Apr
Vintagerock's Weblog. 
Posted by Dean Travchav Phillips on October 26, 2014 at 1:51 pm
hi would love to chat, i look after Wally Hopes box
wallyhopesociety@yahoo.co.uk
Posted by vintagerock on October 27, 2014 at 9:06 am
Many thanks Dean I’ll email you later today Best wishes Peter
Posted by richard vickery on March 31, 2016 at 10:52 pm
Oh i got so busted on that gig ,happy memories though
Posted by vintagerock on April 1, 2016 at 6:16 am
Happy days Richard Cheers Peter
Posted by Jan on August 27, 2018 at 11:12 am
44 yrs ago – my first festie 🙂
Posted by Halit Gunes on April 30, 2020 at 7:32 am
You brought back memories, all wonderful. I left the festival on Tuesday for a trip back to Turkey. Learned about the police raid much later. The atmosphere was incredible, and I heard Gong for the first time. Too bad it is an experience that can not be replicated today, I pity current generation.
Posted by vintagerock on April 30, 2020 at 10:17 am
Yes happy crazy days Best wishes Peter
Posted by Jeniweb (Dover) on November 16, 2022 at 1:16 am
I went as a teenager with my sister and some of her friends from school, rather bizzar really, we went for the day.
Next year I went again with another of my sisters, she went home that evening and I stayed and slept in my sleeping bag, luckily it didn’t rain.
I got back to London a few days later and bumped into friends and told them how great it was. My pal told me he had been there and was going back there with some people he knew, he offered me a lift if I wanted it. I went round to the address he gave me and got a lift in an old army truck full of hippies back to the festival. I had no money and ended up working for a free food kitchen. I had a great time and met many new friends.
Posted by vintagerock on November 16, 2022 at 8:50 am
Thanks for sharing Happy days Peter