Work starts on transforming farm into city-sized festival site
THE huge site build has begun at Glastonbury Festival as the worldfamous event returns in less than six weeks.
A massive army of staff is now in place at the 900-acre Pilton site as they begin work on the transformation of a dairy farm into one of the largest music festivals on the planet.
Activity is already well under way at the bustling site – which is more than 1.5 miles wide, with a perimeter of eight and a half miles – as yellow signs are erected on local roads to direct festival traffic.
Rapid construction of fencing, stages, marquees, toilets and more has begun at the site as the festival prepares to welcome 210,000 people from June 21.
The main Pyramid Stage is also getting dressed as it prepares to showcase headliners Arctic Monkeys, Guns N’ Roses and Sir Elton John this year. A large skeletal stage structure remains at the site allyear round, but yesterday the outer casing of the famous stage is being fitted.
Various smaller marquees have already been erected across the site as a constant stream of tractors, trucks and lorries rumble through the fields.
Work has also begun on some of the off-site camping areas that feature thousands of pre-erected tents.
Over the next six weeks, the big build will really kick into gear, with more than 100 stages still to
be erected.
There is also an incredible number of toilets to prepare, with more than 2,000 long drops, more than 1,300 compost loos and more than 700 metres of urinal to get ready.
Glastonbury Festival is equivalent in size to a large city, and so there is yet more infrastructure that needs to built. This includes tens of miles of trackway and internal
fencing, a large medical centre, a police compound and a church.
For five days in June the festival becomes the largest city in Somerset, dwarfing neighbouring Bath (101,000), Weston-super-Mare (82,000) and Taunton (68,000). It also becomes the fourth largest city in the South West region, behind Bristol (467,000), Plymouth (264,000) and Swindon (233,000).