A POPULAR music festival in Hampshire will be taking a year off in 2019, following torrential weather at the previous event.

Graze Festival has grown in popularity over the four years it has been running, but organisers will be ‘going Glastonbury’ this year.

The event usually takes place in August on Hazeley Fields in Twyford, but in 2018 the heavy rain and high winds led to a steep drop in ticket sales.

Roger Walker, an organiser, said: “We must have picked the only rainy day in last year’s summer, which felt like the hottest since time began!

“It was unfortunate, because around 70-80% of people buy their tickets in the week leading up to the event, and because the forecast was terrible during that week, a lot of people decided to keep their feet planted firmly at home.”

Over 10,000 festival-goers across the four years have seen famous headliners such as The Blockheads and The Beat.

Graze music programmer Oliver Gray said: “It’s been a delight and a privilege to bring major artists to our village and I’m proud of the resilience we showed to carry on through the horrific weather on that August day in 2018 when other festivals threw in the towel.

“My greatest memory is of Texan road warrior Jesse Dayton striding through the woods and knocking out the hardy audience in the middle of a monsoon!”

The festival is run by volunteers and all profits go towards The Graze Festival Community Fund, which has distributed more than £20,000 to local groups and charities.

Roger said: “All of us are still happy to put the time in. We just need a break to put our heads together, like they do with the big festivals – Glastonbury and the others.

“Finding new people to help out certainly wouldn’t go amiss, either. Hopefully we can weatherproof and reinvent, to make sure people come no matter the weather.

“There are no promises, but we do hope to bring back Graze for 2020. People love it and have made many fond memories there.”

However, last year’s event will not be remembered just for the rain, Charlotte Treasure-Jones and Dan Nash made a memory they will never forget – they got married on the stage.

Dan had been performing to the crowd when his long-term partner, who he had been engaged to for ten years, came on stage and asked him to marry her.