The Fainting Field

Image: © Jonathan Clitheroe Taken: 15 Jul 2022

Also referred to as 'The Hollinwell Incident' - this is the site of a peculiar event which garnered media attention from around the world. A recent BBC Sounds Podcast has proposed a 'new' theory as to what happened here on Sunday 13th July 1980 when around 300 children and adults became unwell during and after a marching band competition. The 2022 podcast points to a toxic mixture of bleach and Jeyes fluid in the portable toilets as the cause (there were only 8 such facilities on site), thereby discounting the official 'mass hysteria' explanation, along with crop spraying (a now banned chemical called Tridomorph in particular), radio waves from a nearby transmitter, radon and methane leakage from old mine shafts and a nearby railway tunnel, heat exhaustion, fumes from nearby factories, food poisoning, water contamination, dumped toxic waste, extra-terrestrial activity (of course) and a truly bizarre theory that the military were attempting to interfere with the USSR's radio transmissions from the 1980 Moscow Olympics at the time. The podcast's conclusions do seem plausible enough (if prosaic and certainly not 'new') and it does explain why the ailments appeared over a period of time including adults who became ill at home afterwards. But why were horses and dogs who presumably weren't among those queuing up to use the portaloos affected too?

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