Weyfest Music Festival

11/07/2025

Hello Weyfesters

It's very sad not to have Weyfest this year but there is still some great live local music for you in August. One of Weyfests oldest friends, Des O'Byrne runs Grayshott Folk Club and has been assembling wonderful musicians for many years. The folk club has been a huge success story which Des has grown entirely from scratch.

Grayshott Folk Club, Surrey is holding a mini-festival on Friday 1st and Saturday 2nd August this year and we can TOTALLY recommend it. This writer has been to many of Des's events and the standard of music is very high indeed - and all for a bargain £20 per night!

NB The first night with Merry Hell is now "Waiting list only" :-(

Details below, so please go along and support local live music.

Your (Resting) Weyfest Team

GRAYSHOTT FOLK CLUB MINI-FESTIVAL (1-2nd August 2025)

MERRY HELL (Waiting list only)
Friday 1st August 2025 @ 7.30pm

Each time they come down from Wigan, to play at the Wickham Festival, they stop by and sell out Grayshott Village Hall. They always thoroughly entertain us all, indulging us in Folk/Rock anthems and uplifting music. Everyone goes home with a skip in their step and joy in their hearts. Next day, they'll suddenly find themselves humming or singing a familiar tune like “Bury Me Naked” which is the kind of earworm that makes you wonder; where have I heard that song before?

Firm Festival favourites, Merry Hell continue to crest a wave of success and are selling out shows all across the UK so please don't leave it too long to get your tickets from all of the usual places. Although basically a family affair with four Kettles in the band (John on Guitar, Andrew on Lead Vocals, Bob on Bouzouki with John’s wife Virginia on Vocals), they are more than ably assisted and supplemented by the highly talented Simon Swarbrick (Dave Swarbrick’s Nephew) on Fiddle, Lee Goulding on Keyboards and Colin Foster on Bass.

Merry Hell will be playing for us on Friday 1st August 2025 as part of our “mini-festival”

Tickets £20
Reservations by phone on 01428 607096 (Now waiting list only)

Online through Ents24 at:

https://www.ents24.com/hindhead-events/grayshott-village-hall/merry-hell/7292365

STEVE WICKHAM (THE WATERBOYS) + RAY COEN

Saturday 2nd August 2025 @ 7.30pm

Steve and Ray have visited Grayshott Folk Club twice before; in November 2022 and again in May 2024. Living as they do in the far West of Ireland, it is essential they have plenty of work over here, in order to make their occasional visits worthwhile so we've had to wait a bit. Their visit this time, coincides with another headline appearance they are making at Wickham (yes, Wickham) Festival, near Fareham in Hampshire.

Steve is a masterful Fiddle player who has performed with the very best that music has to offer; Bob Dylan, U2, Sinead O'Connor and of course, The Waterboys for nigh on forty years.

Ray Coen is a singer/song writer guitarist from Sligo, who has been a band mate of Steve's for many years in their occasional, international band NoCrows. Together, they make beautiful sounds and their acoustic interpretation of "Fisherman's Blues" in November 2022, blew us all away. Music to die for..........

Tickets £20 - Available from Grayshott Post Office
Reservations by phone from: 01428 607096

Online from Ents 24 at: https://www.ents24.com/hindhead-events/grayshott-village-hall/steve-wickham-the-waterboys/7292954

Grayshott Folk Club
www.grayshottfolkclub.co.uk
Grayshott Village Hall, Headley Road, Grayshott,
Nr. HINDHEAD, Surrey GU26 6TZ

17/01/2025

Hello Weyfesters

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but we can now confirm that there will not be a Weyfest for 2025. Many of you have enquired about this and hopefully now you can plan other holidays and festivals for those dates.

The very difficult set of circumstances from last year means everyone here needs to take some time out, rethink and rebuild. Weyfest has been an amazing 18 year ride and hugely successful in terms of providing entertainment, camaraderie and wonderful memories. Weyfest was a festival built on passion for music and people rather than just a commercial venture. This was our greatest strength and maybe also sadly our downfall.

There is still however a tremendous will to do it again amongst us all here in the team and we know amongst our wonderful fans. We have the Weyfest DNA locked in a vault and will hope to return when the time is right.

Thanks for all your amazing support over the years - it meant a lot to us!

Your Weyfest Team

08/11/2024

Hi Weyfesters

The Rural Life Museum has now announced that it has reached its target of £150,000. We are delighted to hear this news as well as many of you are obviously. We have received loads of communications from all you lovely people who have been coming to the festival for many years, about whether we can now hold a 2025 festival.

We know that you donated generously to the RLM charity buckets during Weyfest and we are grateful, as we know many of you did so specifically to safeguard Weyfest at the museum. As reported earlier on our page, we are in a position beyond our control.

At our last meeting with the museum back in September, we were given no assurances that even if they reached the target we would be able to hold the festival there. At the moment, this position remains unchanged. However, we are seeking a way forward through discussions with several parties and are also looking to arrange a further meeting with the museum.

Keep the faith and we’ll keep you informed of developments - we really are doing our best.

Your Weyfest Team

03/09/2024

Great weekend of entertainment ahead at the Museum with their Steam at Work rally.

BBQ and bar both nights plus a great line-up of music on Saturday headlined by the wonderful Two Weeks in Nashville.

All details in the post 😁

Don't miss out 👍

Who's ready for the music line up for Steam at Work on Saturday?! Let's go! ⤵

🎤 Stephanie Belle: 3:00 PM - 3:45 PM
Singing classics from the heart, from an era filled with some of our most recognisable female vocalists, Stephanie will be performing nostalgic hits from the 1930's and 1940's.

🎸 Bitter Blues: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
They're a good-time blues and rock mob!

🥁 Five Chambers Full: 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Locked, loaded and loud, this is Surrey's hardest rocking covers band!

🎤 **Flo Wilkes**: 7:15 PM - 8:15 PM
The 18 year old singer-songwriter and musician intertwines the drive of indie-rock instrumentals with the passion of intimate lyricism, establishing a unique sound as recognised in her recently critically acclaimed release, ‘Hopeless’.

🎸 Two Weeks In Nashville: 9:00 PM - 10:30 PM
Best known for their raucous and electric live shows, TWIN have headlined grass-root venues across the UK, alongside support slots with The Hoosiers, Supergrass, Scouting For Girls, Tom Grennan, Everything Everything and Razorlight.

Don't forget:
Saturday 7th, 10am to 10pm:
- 27 confirmed engines of different sizes
- Engine rides around the site
- Steer a engine for £10
- FREE public camping Saturday night only
- Bar and BBQ
- Live music on Saturday only, from 3pm.
- Saturday tickets are valid all day, 10am to 10pm inclusive.

Sunday 8th, 10am to 4pm.
- 27 confirmed engines of different sizes
- Engine rides around the site
- Steer a engine for £10
- Bar and BBQ

We can't wait!!!

The Museum that Madge and Henry built in the garden, that they left to us to care for as their legacy, for all to enjoy, is owned and operated by the Old Kiln Museum CIO, registered charity number 1200370. The Museum is dependent on ticket sales and donations to survive.

28/08/2024

Hello Weyfesters

This is a very sad email to write after 18 years and especially after a fabulous 2024 Weyfest festival. We posted a video on Monday which genuinely brought a tear to our eyes. It was always going to be tough to put on Weyfest this year with massively rising costs (+300% since 2019) and with people having less and less money to spend on luxuries. We do understand that many regulars could simply not afford to come this year.

However, we were determined to go ahead with Weyfest 2024 so as not to let down the 1000s of you people who had bought tickets.

Approaching the festival we were actually looking good, but sadly, the Rural Life Museum (RLM) announcement could not have been worse timed. With 11 days to go our venue was thrown into doubt with a dramatic announcement regarding the RLM closing if it didn't raise £150k by October. We had no warning of this and were unable to mitigate the damaging effects of such a severe announcement. It literally turned our world upside down.

Despite the wonderful sunshine, the announcement affected walk-up sales and even more critically, prevented us from announcing Weyfest 2025. We had already booked 6 bands for 2025 - including 3 of the most popular bands ever to play Weyfest - but following the RLM announcement we had no choice but to cancel those bookings. We also had to pull our usual "festival tickets" deal which had all been set up ready to go and was actually still advertised in the program. We had even produced a Weyfest 2025 poster with the line-up on to support festival sales. Sadly, everything went in the bin.

We were fully behind helping the RLM through its financial difficulties and would have willingly worked with them over the coming months. In fact, our own Weyfest staff rattled tins and buckets that raised an amazing £7k for the RLM. Many of you have since come to us and said you hope the donations will help us - but sadly it's not us that it helped.

Should we need to secure a new venue it will entail significant extra work and costs to overcome the many unknowns that would be introduced to our infrastructure - and we simply don't have the size of team or funds to deal with that situation. Weyfest grew from a pub event to the festival you saw last week with no funding and with directors working in their spare time. None of them has ever asked to be paid and indeed they have often put money in. We also have an amazing management team who work for peanuts and never complain. Overall, we could not have a better workforce and it is thanks to them that we have been able to put on such a brilliant family festival year after year.

The bottom line is that without the financial buffer of 2025 festival sales and with no secured venue it is not viable or responsible to go ahead. We will not take your ticket money for a festival we might not be able to deliver.

Weyfest survived foot & mouth in 2007, a Global pandemic in 2020 and we thought we could survive anything. Sadly the RLM's closure announcement proved a bridge too far!

We would dearly love to find a way of saving Weyfest but we are a very small team and it is simply beyond our means with the current resources we have. What is frustrating, is that we've seen other grass roots festivals raising money through investment, crowdfunding, VIP tickets and similar schemes. Unfortunately, we are not experts in these areas and would need support or contacts to help us. However, if there was a strong enough groundswell of opinion, we would willingly investigate them.

You Weyfesters are an amazing bunch of people and to think that Weyfest 2024 could be the last for the foreseeable future just breaks our hearts.

Thanks for all your support over the years - we will hopefully all meet again

Your Weyfest Team

Followers ⊕

26/08/2024

Hello Weyfesters

Was it really a week ago?

Here's a little reminder of a truly wonderful weekend of friendship, laughter and music.

It was a huge team effort (including you amazing Weyfesters) and watching this video has certainly brought a tear to our eye. See if you can spot yourselves?

Whatever happens in the future we have some amazing memories

Your Weyfest Team

19/08/2024

FANCY DRESS/PHOTO CONTEST RESULTS

Apologies for the slight delay in getting these results out. We had a lot going on this weekend and hunting down and judging the tagged pictures was fun ...but very time consuming.

ALL of the photos below are highly commended :-)

There was one overall winner and several other winners as marked on the photos. The categories got a little lost but we did our best to judge them and the winners were all very worthy.

Every photo marked as a winner get's a personalised Weyfest winners t-shirt with their very own picture on plus one day ticket for the next Weyfest.

The overall Winners (our Mexican family) also gets the crate of Prosecco kindly provide by Wrights Lion Brewery

Please DM us and we will liaise to sort out the prizes :-)

We hoped you enjoyed the Fancy Dress and thanks to all who dressed up

Shall we do it again next year?

Your Weyfest Team

19/08/2024

Thankyou, Thankyou , Thankyou !

The weather was wonderful, the music was wonderful and YOU Weyfesters were wonderful - day and night!

We hope and pray this will not be the last Weyfest - it has certainly been one of our most challenging, with everything that has gone on.

What is for certain, we could not do it without you Weyfesters and our amazing team of volunteers and helpers.

You all contribute to making it what it is! So once again, THANKYOU!

We sincerely hope we can do it again.

Your (very tired) Weyfest Team

PS What were your favourite bands and moments? - you can simply tell us here - or on www.weyfest.co.uk/live

18/08/2024

She's back ...the amazing Acantha Lang

Get over to Weyfest Beekeepers stage right now..you'll thank me later

18/08/2024

Afternoon Weyfesters

It's the final day to day, but what a blast it's been so far. What's been your favourite bits so far?

You can use www.weyfest.co.uk/live to tell us which bands you liked (or didn't like) - please have your say, so we know who to book next time. We are guided by you :-)

You can also see details on the photo competitions via the same link with some great personalised prizes on offer.

NB We'll be announcing the competition winners shortly after the festival, as we've been doing a fair bit of fire-fighting with cancelled bands and missing programs this year! Time has been very short.

You can also use the link above to give us feedback on the festival. Praise for our hard working volunteers is welcomed as is constructive criticism (of course). Also, please let us know any people who have gone above and beyond the call of duty this year.

In the absence of a program, the line-up timings are on www.weyfest.co.uk/line-up and we have hard copies dotted about the site

Enjoy the final day and don't forget those band reviews - prizes (tickets) to be won and you get one entry for every band you review.

Have a great day

Your (very stressed but happy) Weyfest Team

17/08/2024

The word legend was invented for this band .

The mighty Leatherat ❤️

Main stage now

Your Weyfest Team