Festival moves forward after fifty glorious years

Dark skies over Towersey 2014, but the sun isn’t far away

DESPITE a soggy Bank Holiday Monday, both local people and visitors from far and wide turned out in their thousands over the three-days of what was the 50th Towersey Festival.

The festival, which started out from a need to renovate Towersey village hall on 1965, is now able to support a number of local projects. Musical events have taken place in several venues every year in large marquees in the surrounding playingfields, the village hall itself, in the church and in the local pub, The Three Horseshoes, where the sing-around in the barn has became an institution.

Throughout its 50 years, the festival has remained truly family-friendly with music, dance, poetry, street entertainment, film, story-telling, craft workshops, and safe and secure camping facilities, attracting people of all walks of life and ages who have brought colour, enthusiasm and their spending power to Towersey and Thame itself.

This year’s Towersey Festival celebrated its half-century and, particularly during a party for those who have been involved in many special ways, brought together artists and organisers and their families and friends to share some special moments (like that of a now retired Towersey Morris member, of Joe Heap, grandson of festival founder, Dennis Manners, delivering newspapers as a lad, in the village on his uni-cycle) – and of course a big, celebration cake! The cake was cut by Joan Gleeson, aged 91, the last surviving member of the founding committee in 1965.

The whole bank holiday saw around an estimated 8,000 people enjoy the likes of multi-award winning singer-song writer, Richard Thompson, the ever-green festival patron, Roy Bailey, local girl Megan Henwood, Thame First Music Club’s very own popular,The August List and The Ian English Boodlum band with their unique, ‘sherry trifle’ of a mix of off-beat songs and comedy. Some of the other ‘big hitters’ included Whapweasel, Rusty Shackle (back for a second time in two years) and the charismatic and thrilling Seth Lakeman.

It’s hard to imagine quite how Towersey Festival will evolve in the next decades but the recently announced move to the Thame Show Ground, which itself could be changing in the not so far distant future if a proposed move there by Thame Cattle Market goes ahead, is seen by the organisers as a positive development. Thame Show Ground offers scope for a bit more room, better and safer access, better parking facilities, improved crowd control and more involvement with the people of Thame, without losing the Towersey heritage, the involvement of the village and the unique atmoshphere of its catch-phrase, adopted from a comment by a visitor, ‘another lovelier world.’

Three Towersey Legends, L-R, Roy Bailey, Joan Gleeson and Paul Gleeson

So let’s all raise a leather or pewter tankard of real ale of cider to Steve and Joe Heap and their dedicated crew of organisers, and to future generations, to the next 50 years of the Towersey Festival.