St. Andrew's Church Weeley

Nov 11th, 2022

St. Andrew's church is located down a country lane, amidst arable fields, halfway between Weeley & Weeley Heath. It lies in a shady spot beside a duckpond, (although all the water evaporated during the drought Summer of 2022). St. Andrew's is something of a marker for a unique event in the history of the village, that has become the stuff of legend in rock festival folklore. Almost unbelievably, after the harvest in 1971, the stubble fields here were used to stage a festival of progressive rock, over the August bank holiday weekend. Now popularly recalled as the Weeley Pop Festival, hippies & assorted music lovers arrived from all over the country, in order to listen to such chart topping acts as Mungo Jerry; Status Quo; Rod Stewart & The Faces; Marc Bolan & T-Rex; Barclay James Harvest; Al Stewart; Rory Gallagher; & all sorts of lesser known acts. Naively, the organisers believed that such a setlist would only draw a crowd of 10,000 - in the event, at least 10-times that many arrived on-site, (some who were there claim it was closer to 20-times the available printed tickets). Not surprisingly, the impromptu Pop Festival was a struggle to control, with official security actually fighting for supremacy with a gang of Hell's Angels, who actually came off worst & were shown insult to injury by being arrested by police. The event is fondly remembered as 'the English Woodstock', & that's no exaggeration, considering the quality & quantity of performers taking the main stage opposite Weeley church. Unfortunately, very little was recorded of the 3 day festival & nothing today remains but the church as an indicator that this spot once hosted such a massive gathering...
Nov 4th, 2022

Jun 25th, 2022

Lovely place to visit
Mar 12th, 2022

Nice quiet church in nice surrounding
Nov 4th, 2021