Creamfields Festival returns this weekend, marking 20 years since it found a permanent home in the Cheshire countryside at Daresbury. What began as a popular club night in Liverpool city centre has grown into one of the biggest festivals on the UK music calendar and around the world.
From Liverpool Club Night to National Festival
Creamfields was dreamed up by the minds behind legendary Liverpool superclub Cream, when, in 1998 they decided to hold a music festival. At the time they couldn't have foreseen just how big their one-day event, first hosted in Winchester, Hampshire, would become.
For its second year, Creamfields was held in the Old Liverpool Airfield in Speke, with more than 50,000 people flocking to the site for performances from the likes of Basement Jaxx and Pet Shop Boys.
Seven Years in Speke and a Move to Daresbury
It would stay on the site for the next seven years, in that time introducing a new live outdoor stage, being named "Event of the Year" and the "Best Dance Festival" at the UK Festival Awards, and hosting acts such as Underworld and Faithless.
Creamfields was still not a multiple-day event, and those who went packed into the riverside site for 15-hour dance marathons that attracted top DJs such as Pete Tong, Paul van Dyk and Paul Oakenfield, as well as leading bands.
The end came for Creamfields in the city when the decision was made to move the festival to the Daresbury Estate, an area of open parkland around Daresbury Hall in Halton, near Runcorn in 2006. At the time, a spokesperson for Creamfields said 'it is time to move on', thanking the local community for its "positive" reception of the festival.
Two Decades of Spectacle
Today, it marks 20 remarkable years in Daresbury with one of the biggest celebrations and line-ups of dance, trance and electronic music in the world.
The gallery above takes a look at Creamfields in its earliest iterations, from ravers in airfields to colourful neon outfits and stages that grew to become giant spectacles.
