THE organiser of the Wickham Music Festival has confirmed that the event is staying in the village.

This comes after concerns that the event would be looking for a new venue following the muddy event earlier in August.

In a comment on its Facebook page, when asked if the arena would be moved to a new location, the music festival said it was “looking to do so”.

However, organiser Peter Chegwyn has confirmed to the Chronicle that the festival will not be leaving its current home and that the comment was referring to the site being rearranged.

He said: “It’s just moving around fields on our now existing site, that’s all. We’re not looking for a new site at all. It’s just moving between the fields so we can have the arena on a better-drained field and move the car parking and camping the other way. Nothing more than that.

“It’ll all be in exactly the same fields, we’re just swapping round what’s on each field. We use five different fields, it’s just swapping round to make better use of existing land. We’re not leaving Wickham or anything like that.”

As previously reported, attendees to this year’s Wickham Festival endured incredibly muddy conditions following rain prior to the event, as well as ongoing poor weather throughout the weekend.

Mr Chegwyn continued: “Obviously the weather conditions didn’t help this year, although we’ve sold the better part of a quarter of a million tickets in the last week, so our audience seems to like the event.”

Tickets for the 2024 Wickham Festival are currently on sale on its website. The festival is scheduled to return with a new line-up from August 1 to August 4.