Wallies of Wessex

[Joviale]

I check facebook every now and then to see if new "lost sheep" have found us. So here is an exchange with a guy called Jake:

joëlle
Hi and happy new year to you!
What is your connection to grosvenor rd?
j.

Jake Stratton-kent
Hi and all the best for 2009. I was one of the 'Wallies of Wessex' who moved to Grosvenor Road after the Wally Squats were closed down.
Wally Jake

Joëlle
Hi, well that does ring a bell. Welcome on board!
Did you check the gr forum? There is a lot more happening than here:
index.php
If you become a member, you can write your anecdotes and refresh our memories

[Joviale]

For those who might have forgoten:

"The first Stonehenge Free Festival was held in 1974, with some 500 hippies attending the summer solstice, accompanied by an experimental electronic noise band, called Zorch. After the festival, 30 men and women, calling themselves the "Wallies of Wessex", decided to stay, setting up a camp in the field by the stones. They declared that their aim was to "let the mysteries of Stonehenge work through them".
Taken to court and ordered to leave their camp, the Wallies simply moved it 6ft to the side, onto a stretch of common land, where they stayed until the winter. Their leader, Wally Hope (Philip Russell), said, "We hold Stonehenge in our hearts. We are not squatters, we are men of God. We want to plant a Garden of Eden with apricots and cherries, where there will be guitars instead of guns and the Sun will be our nuclear bomb."

Those were the days...
Found there:
(http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/colle ... ropriating

More here:
http://business.virgin.net/nigel.ayers/wally.html

[Ricky Wally]

Hi there Jake Wally its Ricky Wally
Yes here still alive and kicking, you may remember me as I arrived at the stones after the Battle of Windsor Park in 1974 just in time for the first of many many festivals there, Glastonbury and many others along the way. You might remember me better as being with Millie Wally and Mitch Wally Millie and Mitch were from the Isle of white which in later years we stayed for a few summers. After the Squat at London road closed I move for the winter of 75 to Grosvenor Road where I spent a lot of time in the caf with Brig and Maggie and left for the hills in the beginning of the heatwave in 19766 from there after the festival season finished moved to Westbury beneath the White horse. People might remember me as I had a white German Shepard called Debbie dog. and she was with me right the way through the end of the stones and the whole of the time at London road.

Anyway from the White horse we moved to a commune type place in North Devon then back to Grosvenor Road and then following Brig and Maggie to Llangibie common and then to Tally Valley.

Well that was quite a journey, so I hope that you or some one here may remember me?

[Dominic]

Hi' Ricky, - I don't remember you or Debbie Dog but I remember Llangubi Common and Tally Valley. - Here's a reminder of those days. - Pic's from the common. _ That's Julian and Maggie on the swing.

[Ricky Wally]

Hi Dominic
I do remember you from your pic but only faintly, but I do remember Maggie and Brig very well and I am hopeing to see brig soon.

You might have remembered me later when I no longer had debbie dog but lived at Llangibie Common as the one that liked in the woods with my chickeds first in a bender then in a Tipi. Had a horse called Tally and some goats when I moved to Tally vally. There I lived up on NAB's fields up by the Big Red Bus and had 3 horse's a welsh Black cow and calf some pigs ducks and 6 goats before I moved into the woods in mountains of the Breacon Beacons must have been about 87/88. When I left the Vally I also had NABS Champ. I remember getting picked up on one bonefire night taking wood from the forest over by the common and everyone went with me when I got arressted and I got a 50 pound fine lol. I seems there are only a few people from 74 - 88 that I remember andthey remember me.
Never minds thats life

[Dominic]

I guess stories of Llangubi Common,-Tally Valley,-Windsor and Stonehenge free festies, are apropriate in the topic 'Wallies'
-----------------------------

More pics from Llangubi Common.

Hay Ricky,- I'm guessing you're still a woodland creature then. Your face seems strangely familiar but I have to admit that my memory of you hasn't quite clicked in yet. A horse called Tally rings a faint bell in my head, - I do, however, remember the first time someone moved into the woods adjacent to the common. - Was that you? - If so, I remember being very impressed with your set-up, although I might not have shown all that much interest at the time because my main interest was live-in vehicles and caravans.

Having said that I still had a lot of respect for people who were doing it in other ways. I was an occasional visitor to Tally Valley (tipi valley)(about 18 miles from the common but that was considered to be neighbours out there then). - I loved what was going on there. There was a natural barrier to motor vehicles there as I remember. That double-decker bus was the only one there, and that was high up on the edge of the moor. I've forgotten his name for now, but I believe he was the first to buy land from Nab (the man who initially owned the valley). He had to make a track to get the bus there. He was already set up with his bus blocked up and firmly rooted and his patch like a mini-farm, before the tipi crowd started buying land, lower down the valley, from Nab, It wasn't long before the whole valley was owned by various hippy types, mostly tipi dwellers but some benders too. The only other wheeled home low down in the valley was an old style showmans wagon. I think it was Cherry who lived there.

One had to drive over high moorland to get there, then it was only possible to drive so far down towards the valley. After that it was trails through fields that got wider and wider during the muddy season as people without wellies would walk along the edge to avoid the quagmire.

I was walking down there one time when someone pointed out to me that this, dome shaped, bender was in fact a sweat-lodge and just as I was shown the dammed pool in the freezing cold river/stream next to it, where people would quench after a good steam, about eight steaming naked hippies emerged from the sweat-lodge and jumped into the pool. It makes me shiver to think of it, even now.

[Joviale]

about the wallies in stonehenge:

[Joviale]

Its wise to download it from Vimeo, otherwise you can only watch little bits at the time!
I didn't know about the connection between Crass (my favourite punk band) and Stonehenge.

[Weed]

@Joelle -- video played fine for me

[Joviale]

I suppose it depends on the connection! Ours's is not very powefull.
Scarry that film isn't it! I'd forgotten about that story. A bunch of wallies came to the rd after being evicted from stonehenge, anybody remembers, come on, stories!!!