Britain cannot claim the music festival as its own. It is, of course, a phenomenon that has expanded across the globe, not to mention beyond music – food, arts, crafts, philosophical talks and general communing with nature are as much a part of the new generation of festivals as live bands.

At the same time, the festival’s roots go back a long way in Britain. Wild carousing is deeply embedded in the nation’s history as a way of letting off steam and inverting the traditional social structure, while the notion of bonding with fellow human beings after a winter’s isolation was integral to early gatherings. Could Brits be hard-wired by their heritage to be festival mad?

Prehistoric parties

Indeed, mass revelry goes back even further than we previously thought. In 2013, archaeologists from University College London discovered cattle teeth at Stonehenge, indicating that the famous prehistoric stone circle was the site of vast communal feasts as early as 250BC. The research suggests that up to one tenth of the entire British population – coming from as far as Scotland –gathered together there. As archaeology professor Mike Parker Pearson quips, it was “the only time in prehistory that the people of Britain were unified.” Other ancient festivals, too, were aimed at creating a sense of belonging. At Beltane, the May Day festival that originated in Scotland and Ireland, communities gathered to celebrate their proximity to nature – and to each other.