Thousands of people will be at Mount Ephraim Gardens next August for its biggest music festival since 2007.

The vast grounds near Hernhill, which once attracted the likes of Lethal Bizzle, the Maccabees and Calvin Harris to the popular Electric Gardens, will now be home to A New Day Festival.

The family-focused three-day event will welcome headliner Wilko Johnson and Scottish multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson from Grammy Award-winning Jethro Tull.

The woman behind Glastonbury’s Kidzfield will be providing the children’s entertainment and there will be an eclectic mix of music and craft workshops, food stalls and bars, and for those staying over there will be camping as well as glamping.

Other musicians on the line-up include Heavy Metal Kids, Limehouse Lizzy, Jackie
Lynton, the Blockheads and Canterbury’s own Caravan.

The organisers, who successfully ran Weyfest in Surrey, say they are “veterans of countless festivals, either as organisers or fans” and say they know exactly what festival-goers want.

One of them, David Rees, said: “We worked for 11 years on Weyfest, helping it grow from nothing to a great little festival, but in the last couple of years things turned a bit sour.

“For a number of reasons, we have left Weyfest and have gone back to our original ideals with A New Day Festival.

“We know what we like at festivals and, just as importantly, what we don’t like.

“Great music is vital of course, but no matter how good it might be, people need to feel happy and secure and comfortable during the evening. People don’t want long queues for toilets, overpriced beer and food, heavy-handed security and so on.

“And they don’t want to pay the earth for a ticket. We want people to go away happy and looking forward to next year, not feeling ripped off.

“We’ve had a lot of support from all over the area and it already feels like a proper community project.”

A New Day Festival will run from Friday, August 5, to Sunday, August 7, 2016, and weekend tickets start at £89.

For details and tickets, click here.