Swanage Folk Festival
The biggest dance festival in the UK brings over two hundred Morris and dance performances and fifty plus bands to fill a Dorset seaside town with colour and music.
A well-provisioned, genuinely busy Victorian seaside town with a heritage steam railway, a UNESCO coastline on its doorstep, a weekly market, over 60 places to eat and drink, and enough independent character to hold a visitor for a full and satisfying day.
Cottages, B&Bs and hotels near Swanage, Dorset.
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Get the free badge →Event details come from organisers and can change. Please check with the organiser before you travel.
"A two-day Dorset show on the August hillsides above Blackmore Vale, where the landscape itself is the argument for attending: old breeds in the ring, and Thomas Hardy countryside rolling away on every side."
Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show
"A working farm field below the silhouette of Corfe Castle. Five stages, four days, and the particular quiet of the Dorset hills when the music stops between sets."
Purbeck Valley Folk Festival
"One of the South West's premier agricultural exhibitions, held at the West Bay showground near Bridport with livestock, horses, homecrafts, horticulture and over 400 trade stands."
Melplash Agricultural Show
"A long-running west Dorset agricultural show on the coast near Bridport with livestock and food halls."
Melplash Show
"Free live folk, shanty singing and ceilidh dancing tumble along the seafront of a Jurassic Coast town, anchored by headline concerts at the Marine Theatre."
Lyme Folk Weekend
"A small and cherished late-August fete in one of Dorset's quietest hill villages, combining the Gardening Club's annual show with stalls, homemade teas and the particular peace of a village afternoon that has barely changed in decades."
Halstock Fete
"Father Time crowns the elected Queen of the Revel in this North Cornwall village on the Monday after August 12th, after which she leads a mounted procession to the Revel Ground for Cornish wrestling, fancy dress, dancing and feasting in a celebration that has marked the founding of the village since the medieval period."
Marhamchurch Revel
✦ Weird and Wonderful"The Levellers' fiercely independent family festival runs six stages with no sponsorship, a Magic Teapot, folk sessions and a different fancy-dress theme every Sunday."
Beautiful Days
"A Bank Holiday town takeover with an open-air FAR Stage, Betjeman Sessions, pub music and street entertainment all within walking distance in Wadebridge."
Cornwall Folk Festival
"A week of music, dance and song for adults of all abilities at England's national centre for folk arts, tucked into a manor in the Quantock Hills."
Halsway Folk Summer School
"Vintage biplanes drone overhead while hard driving bluegrass and old time pickers jam around a bonfire on one of the quirkiest festival fields in the country."
Didmarton Bluegrass Festival
"One of England's oldest surviving calendar customs, Punkie Night sees Hinton St George children parade through the village at dusk swinging handmade lanterns carved from mangelwurzels, accompanied by Morris dancing and the traditional Punkie Song."
Hinton St George Punkie Night