The folk club of the same name was founded by Pat Drinkwater in 1970 in a former storeroom at the rear of The Lamb pub in Mortimer Street,
Trowbridge. Early performers included
Maddy Prior and
Tim Hart,
Keith Christmas,
Dick Gaughan and
Stéphane Grappelli. The first festival was held in 1974 before moving to Stowford Farm,
Farleigh Hungerford, in 1980, under the direction of Alan Briars and Dave Newman. Newman died in 2005 and Briars in 2007. The 2011 event was called off, the first time this had happened, because of difficulties in obtaining ticket revenues from the online transaction company. Trowbridge Village Pump Festival Limited, the company that ran the festival, did not find out until late January 2010 that the online transaction provider had sold on that part of their business to another company. The new owner viewed festivals as very risky and applied conditions to the release of the ticket revenue, i.e. the monies would not be released until three months after the festival. It was by that time too late move to another provider, and the company shareholders voted to suspend the event. Many of the original members decided to resurrect the festival under a new name. The 2012
Village Pump Folk Festival took place at White Horse Country Park,
Westbury on 20–22 July 2012 with
Show of Hands as festival patrons. It was covered by
FromeFM. Following disappointing ticket sales in 2015 and 2016, the organisers decided to take the Village Pump Folk Festival into voluntary liquidation. The 2017 festival was initially cancelled, but later a smaller festival was planned. Another group of volunteers, including several previous committee members, organised a 2018 festival at Stowford Manor Farm. In 2019 the organisation was unable to meet Wiltshire Council's requirements for the event licence, and in 2020 the festival could not be held due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. == 2010 line up ==