Petworth Festival 2021 hailed as "complete delight"

From July 14-18 the festival operated at 50 per cent capacity, thereafter at 75 per cent capacity until the end.

And though, like last year, this year will make a “moderate loss”, Stewart is thrilled at the quality of the events and at the great atmosphere which enveloped them all.

“I can’t say that I would ever want to repeat a year like this, but the actual events we had and the extraordinary atmosphere that we had were just fantastic.

“We had so many people who for the first time in many months were sitting in a fairly crowded room and they loved what they were seeing and hearing, and the comments from the musicians were the same, for many their first chance to perform in months and months in front of a live audience. We had about three comments from people who felt at some point uncomfortable about something, but otherwise the comments were that we had managed it all extremely well. We did go up to 75 per cent and most of the events were sold out, but there was always a feeling of space. The church was very well ventilated and there is new air-conditioning at Leconfield Hall and half a dozen of our events were outdoors so we actually found that there was very little Covid anxiety.

“75 per cent was a self-imposed limit. We could have gone up to 100 per cent but we felt early on that because the festival was so soon after the limits being lifted that we were pretty confident that our audiences would still like a bit of reassurance. We did also ask people to wear masks when they were moving around and they were happy with that.

“I am very very proud of what we did. On the last night there was a feeling that even if this had been a normal year this would have been a very very good festival in terms of the events we had, but in the circumstances we also had the sheer joy of getting back to it and our audiences coming back, seeing them again after such a long time. We have an incredibly loyal audience and we see people time and time and time again. We have had an endless catalogue of thanks and praise. It is very touching and very gratifying.

“It has not been easy. There were lots of decision we had to take. I am very proud of the team. We had a lot of big decisions early on and we were able to stick with them because they were the right decisions.

“We did have to dip into our reserves last year, and this year things will depend very much how the literary festival goes in the autumn. On its own terms the summer festival won’t quite have washed its face, but it won’t be anything too serious, and with luck, with the literary festival we will come close to balancing out. I don’t think we will actually quite balance out, but it won’t be catastrophic. There is some money in the bank. Don’t get me wrong. We are not talking about piles of money. But we have been very prudent and it has given us the confidence we needed and has meant that we can live with a moderate loss last year and this year.”

Already roughly half the 2022 summer festival is in place, and Stewart is planning at this point on 100 per cent attendance being possible.

“At this stage we have to hope that we will be back to 100 per cent, no question. There comes a point where it is critical that we are back to full capacity.”