About Alchemy Festival

Alchemy Festival was an independent music festival held annually near Coningsby, Lincolnshire, starting in 2009. The site sat roughly a mile outside the town on the road toward Kirkby on Bain, near Tattershall Thorpe, at Scholey Park, Wharfe Lane, Coningsby, Lincolnshire, LN4 4PD. It ran into the mid-2010s before being discontinued.

Each edition was timed to fall close to the autumnal equinox; one confirmed year ran across the weekend of 16 to 18 September. After Alchemy Festival came to an end, its organisers went on to run a separate event, Equinox Festival.

Character and Site

The festival described itself as non-corporate, non-sponsored, and non-commercial, deliberately run in the style of an old-school free festival rather than a branded event, with on-site prices kept close to what visitors would pay on a typical high street. A dedicated family camping field sat apart from the louder, busier areas of the site, though there were no crèche facilities on the ground; parents and guardians were responsible for supervising children throughout their stay. Dogs were welcome across the site provided they were kept on a lead.

Glass containers were not permitted anywhere on site, a rule tied to the ground's status as a wildlife reserve, though visitors were otherwise free to bring their own food and drink rather than rely on traders. The festival ran largely on volunteer labour: stewards, litter pickers, and "carers" supporting disabled access all helped keep the weekend running. A small donation-based transport service (trikes ferrying kit between the car park and the campsite) was a minor but well-liked fixture of the site.

Ticket prices rose over the festival's run, from around £50 for an adult early-bird ticket in its earlier years to roughly £80 by its later ones, with family tickets, discounted under-16 tickets, parking, and optional tickets for dogs or attendees sleeping in vehicles all sold separately. The organisers were unusually open about where that money went, publishing a rough breakdown of ticket revenue: about 30% toward entertainment, 30% toward camping infrastructure, and the remaining 40% toward music and artist fees.

Music and Line-Up

At its fullest, the site held seven stages, including one powered by solar panels and another by pedal power, hosting more than a hundred bands and DJs across a single weekend. Acts who played across its various editions included Here and Now, Back to the Planet, Zion Train, RDF, Ferocious Dog, Dub Pistols, and Astralasia, alongside Hawkwind's Nik Turner and his band the Outriders of the Apocalypse. Turner, in a press interview at the time, singled the event out for being run in the style of an "old style" festival. That description matched how the organisers pitched it themselves.

The wider UK festival scene Alchemy Festival was part of is still very much active; a current calendar of festivals running across the country sits on the festival guide, alongside practical packing and camping advice for anyone heading to one this year.