Glastonbury Festival may be over, but the South Downs has its own heritage of freespirited music and dancing.

In 2001 the Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men were barred from dancing on the Bronze Age landmark which gave them their name, due to fears they would spread foot and mouth disease.

Instead the morris men held their performance in a nearby car park, but they still managed to put on a colourful and noisy performance.

With bells, handkerchiefs and sticks, the dancers ushered in May Day in fine traditional style.

This was not the first timemusiclovers were prevented from getting to the ancient hill fort over health and safety concerns.

In 1989 a hippie music festival was planned to take place at the site of Chanctonbury Ring, but police stopped it from going ahead.

The National Trust, owners of nearby Cissbury Ring, was concerned the relic might be damaged if a festival was held on the land.

Undeterred, the hippies pitched their tents at the foot of the hill and held the festival anyway.

Two years later, in 1991, police and the local authority agreed to let the event go ahead on the Downss, near Arundel, after negotiating with the organisers.

Ten times the expected number of New Age partygoers turned up, but access to Cissbury ring and Chanctonbury ring was still off limits. Police were again called to protect the beauty spots from being overrun by festivalgoers.

A police spokesperson at the time said: “We are operating a checkpoint in Chanctonbury Lane throughout the weekend. Each year these travellers seem to move with great regularity from one site to another at certain times of year, and it seems we are due for an invasion over the next week or so.”

On Saturday, August 17, 1991, a police spokesman said there had been no public order problems at the event.

Two days later, the festival took a turn for the worse when three men were stabbed in the early hours of Monday, August 19 in a nearby car park during the all-night rave.

After the trouble of the previous year, in 1992 the police set up a barricade to repel the New Age travellers from holding the festival at the beauty spot.

By 1993 the festival had come to a permanent end and the police were given new powers to disrupt events that had not been organised with them in advance.

 

ON THIS DAY

 

1608:  French explorer Samuel Champlain founded the city of Quebec.

1806: Michael Keen, of Isleworth, exhibited the first edible cultivated strawberry, which he called Keen’s Seedling.

1928: A policeman’s helmet and a bunch of red roses were among the pictures shown on John Logie Baird’s first television transmission in colour.

1954: Food rationing ended in Britain.

1959: The first radio broadcast of Sing Something Simple with Cliff Adams and the Adams Singers took place.

1969: Brian Jones was found drowned in his swimming pool.

The Argus’ popular “Looking Back” feature has been compiled into an A4, soft back book which catalogues the events that have made their mark on the people of Sussex. The fascinating archive of “Looking Back” images dates back to the 1930s when The Argus first started to print photographs. The book costs £6.99 including postage and packing. To order please visit theargus.co.uk/store