One Love Festival (UK)

One Love is the reggae, dub and sound-system festival that Dan Wiltshire, a DJ from Hastings, has put on in England since 2008. The page, read on 28 September 2026, already presents it as One Love / One Sun, in the woods of Bentley Estate, near Lewes, East Sussex. The postcode a Lewes taxi guide gives is BN8 5AF, in Halland, about seven miles from the town. Two currents share the same woods. One Love stays with roots, dub and sound system. One Sun goes in among the trees with ambient, dub techno, jungle, drum and bass and techno. The Sussex Express, Andy Hemsley, on 27 May 2026, says 2026 was the first weekend under that double name at Bentley, from 21 to 23 August. The same page still sells a later August weekend at Bentley. Those digits are not printed. That page does not list who sings on that later August.

Hemsley sets the start in 2008, for the thirty years of Bob Marley's One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica, in 1978. The first meeting was at Herstmonceux Castle. Angus Taylor, in United Reggae, on 13 August 2010, remembers it as a low-key, sound-system-only affair in Sussex. In an interview of 11 July 2012, Wiltshire says the second year brought fights and courts, that they left East Sussex, and that 2009 ended at a zoo in Kent. He does not give the zoo's name. In 2010 the festival enters Hainault Country Forest Park, in Essex, and Taylor calls it the first outdoor reggae near the capital since Peace & Love, at Three Mills Green, in 2000. He counts 1,700 people.

That Saturday in 2010, Winston McAnuff, with Mafia and Fluxy and Gussie P at the desk, sings Fear and Head Corner Stone, and material from the album Nostradamus. Tippa Irie lets go Hornsman Blow. Julian Marley sings Sharp As A Razor and the title track of Awake. On Sunday, Horace Martin, grey suit and shades, sings Never Gonna Give Jah Up, in homage to Sugar Minott. Lloyd Brown, who calls the site his backyard, sings Oh Mr DC and Good Thing Going, also for Minott, and then Close To Thee and Food For Thought, which runs into Brinsley Forde's chant in the film Babylon. Julia Biel, with Soothsayers, sings Don't Stay Away, by Phyllis Dillon. Michael Prophet closes with Creation Rock and Mash Down Rome. Luciano, whom Taylor calls Jah Messenger, then steps into the Saxon tent, with Papa Levi and Nereus Joseph, in a tribute to Minott. The title of that tribute is not written down. Luciano says the name speaks for itself and that he did not hesitate when he was called.

On 10, 11 and 12 August 2012 the festival returns to Kent, to the Hop Farm at Paddock Wood, the site of Vince Power's festival. Taylor, on 17 November, quotes Wiltshire: three and a half thousand people, a main stage and four tents, Saxon Sound, Dub Shack, Lively Up Yourself and a Reggae Film Festival cinema. On Saturday the volume is low. Kevin Isaacs, with Tallawah, opens with My Number One and Love Overdue and closes with Night Nurse. Frankie Paul, in a purple boubou, with Ruff Cutt, lets out Worries In The Dance and Tu Sheng Peng, and says One Love means peace. Freddie McGregor sings Let Them Try and I Was Born A Winner, and in the encore Here I Come and Revolution, by Dennis Brown, Carry Go Bring Come, by Justin Hinds, and Wings of a Dove, by the Blues Busters. On Sunday Don Campbell dedicates See It In Her Eyes, from 1993, to a wedding on site. Dawn Penn says she does not want to sing No No No and in the end she sings it. Cornell Campbell, with Soothsayers and Nick Manasseh at the desk, closes with Gorgon, Queen of the Minstrel and My Country.

In 2013 Taylor places the festival at Damyn's Hall Aerodrome, near Upminster. David Rodigan says there that it feels like the new home and that the festival celebrates dub and reggae. He leaves no title from that night. Hemsley sums up the later sites in one sentence: London, Kent and Somerset. He does not name the Somerset village. The same article says a pause was announced in 2023 and that the festival came back already as One Love / One Sun. The page treats 2026 as a weekend already lived at Bentley and names, with no song, Luciano, Admiral Tibet, Little Roy, Bushman, Saxon Sound in its fiftieth year, University of Dub, Jah Tubbys, Coxson and Earl Gateshead. In the woods it names A Guy Called Gerald, Ray Keith, The Grid, Jagz Kooner, Mixmaster Morris, Chris Coco, Drum Club Sound System and Nick Manasseh. That is a bill, not a walk through songs.

The page now sells Friday at 40 pounds and Saturday at 50. The weekend, with camping, comes to 115. A taxi guide had left the 2026 early bird from 110. Both figures stay together. A campervan adds 60. There is a plan from 20 pounds a month. Under-12s come in free. From 12 to 15 a child ticket is required. People arrive on Friday afternoon, sleep Friday and Saturday, and leave on Sunday before one. The music runs until about two in the morning, and the big names are programmed toward eleven for anyone going back on the Lewes bus, which the page puts between eleven in the morning and eleven at night. Goldstone Rum, from Henfield, supplies the punch. Raystede, the refuge next door, receives a percentage of every ticket.