The festival stage was present and the original soundtrack was playing but the field was empty. This therefore became a shrine to its recent history, as the abbey remains are a shrine to its more ancient history. As an abbey the worship would have been to a God, as a rock and folk festival site the
50 000 people would have made pilgimages to worship the pop stars. The empty stage created an even larger distance between them and us. The celebrity and the onlookers the adored and the adoring.

In the mid 12th Century, an Abbot and twelve canons founded a new Premonstratensian Abbey on 'the island of sheep' at Tupholme. Dressed in white, known as the 'white canons', they served the local community as priests and missionaries, deriving an income from agriculture and wool production until dissolved by Henry Vlll in 1536.

The site changed ownership several times becoming Abbey Farm in the 19th Century. In the early 1970s after becoming derelict, it hosted Bardney Pop Festivals, which included Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys and Genesis.

Tupholme Abbey was acquired by Heritage Lincolnshire Trust in 1988.

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