Homelands 1999 The First Festival
The Bowl, Matterley Estate, near Winchester • Saturday 29 May into Sunday 30 May 1999. One year after the first Creamfields used the same Hampshire landscape, Homelands arrived with nine themed arenas, major live electronic acts, club brands and BBC Radio 1 broadcasting from the site. It was a clear sign that British rave and superclub culture had become full-scale festival culture.
From superclub to festival city
Homelands did not appear from nowhere. The Matterley Bowl had already hosted the first Creamfields in May 1998, when Cream and Mean Fiddler took a superclub-scale audience into an outdoor multi-arena format. By the end of that year, former Cream director Darren Hughes was working with Mean Fiddler on a new festival at the same site. NME followed the split as it happened: Creamfields would continue elsewhere, while Homelands took the Winchester date and venue.
The first Homelands pushed the format wider. Its early announcement described nine themed arenas and a bill that crossed live electronic music, house, trance, drum & bass and club-hosted spaces. The Home Arena included The Chemical Brothers, Asian Dub Foundation, Fatboy Slim, DJ Shadow and Paul Oakenfold. Mixmag’s arena carried Underworld, Faithless, Carl Cox, Deep Dish and Gilles Peterson. The End ran separate deep-house and drum & bass spaces, with names including Darren Emerson, Laurent Garnier, DJ Hype, Andy C, Krust, Bryan Gee, Fabio and Grooverider.
The BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix arena made the broadcast part of the event itself. Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and John Digweed were billed into a space that also carried live Radio 1 coverage. The surviving 30 May broadcast preserves Sasha, Pete Tong and Oakenfold from Homelands.
This is where the late-1990s dance festival looks visibly different from the early mega-rave. The scale remains, but the structure is more formal: branded arenas, media partners, live acts, superclub hosts and national-radio broadcasting all operating as part of one carefully segmented site.
Homelands 1999 on Radio 1
Rave Archive UK does not currently hold its own transfer from the first Homelands, but the BBC Radio 1 broadcast survives on Mixcloud.
Sasha, Pete Tong & Paul Oakenfold — Live at Homelands
Paul Oakenfold — Homelands, Winchester
Matterley changes hands and identity
The same bowl near Winchester links two important chapters. Creamfields 1998 proved a 25,000-scale club festival could work there; Homelands 1999 returned with a new brand, nine arenas and a line-up built around both live electronic acts and club culture. Creamfields, meanwhile, moved north to Liverpool later in 1999.
That makes Matterley a useful geographical marker in the archive. The venue is the continuity; the promoters, brands and festival strategies around it are what changed.
