Anomaly•Registry
AR-0198

The Hollinwell Incident

Later explained
Date Sunday 13 July 1980
Location The Hollinwell site, a field beside Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, England.
Coordinates 53.0902, -1.2296
Category Mass and Collective

Summary

On Sunday 13 July 1980, at a children’s band contest on a field near Kirkby-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, children and adults began collapsing. More than three hundred were affected, fainting, sick and vomiting. Two hundred and fifty-nine were taken to hospital by ambulance and four hospitals were placed on red alert. Nine children were kept in overnight. No source the Registry retrieved reports a death.

The incident reached the House of Commons the next day. A joint investigation by Ashfield District Council and Nottinghamshire Police ruled out food poisoning, contaminated water, nerve gas and radio waves, and concluded mass hysteria. The report was filed away, and the Registry found no peer-reviewed study of the episode.

what was counted on the day, and what was not affected: an estimate, no official tally was found about 300 taken to hospital by ambulance 259 kept in overnight 9 deaths reported 0 four hospitals placed on red alert the council and police report was filed away no peer-reviewed study of the episode was found IT REACHED PARLIAMENT THE NEXT DAY. Food poisoning, contaminated water, nerve gas and radio waves were ruled out. The conclusion was mass hysteria. the government declined a national inquiry while the local one was still running.
Figure Drawn by Anomaly Registry from the published figures. The hospital and overnight numbers are consistently reported; the number affected is an estimate, because the Registry found no official tally, and it is marked as one.

What is documented

That it happened, on the parliamentary record. The event is in Hansard from the next day. On 17 July 1980 Frank Haynes MP asked about "the incident in which many children and adults collapsed at Kirkby in Ashfield on 13 July". Dennis Skinner MP named the affected children’s home communities as Creswell, Glapwell and Clay Cross, and other areas in Bolsover and adjoining constituencies.

The numbers. The Nottingham Post’s 2020 account gives more than three hundred children and adults affected, two hundred and fifty-nine taken to hospital by ambulance, and four hospitals placed on red alert. Nine children were kept in overnight. No source the Registry retrieved reports a death, and the Registry found no official tally of those affected.

What it looked like. The eyewitness Terry Bingham told the BBC: "They fell down like nine pins. We didn’t know what was happening."

The government declined a national inquiry. Four days after the event, Patrick Jenkin, Secretary of State for Social Services, was asked whether he would hold one. He answered "No", stating that "The Ashfield district council is carrying out a full investigation of the incident", assisted by other local and regional bodies, and that until it was complete it was not possible to judge what further action might be needed.

Crop spraying was raised immediately. On 14 July, the day after the event, Dennis Skinner raised a point of order complaining of the government’s failure to send a spokesman, said the children had been "fainting, sick, and vomiting", linked public concern to crop spraying, and said a private notice question had been requested and refused. The Speaker replied that he had "heard no point of order on which I can rule". The Registry found no other entry on the incident in the 1980 Hansard record, so Parliament never received a conclusion.

What the investigation ruled out. The joint council and police inquiry considered and excluded food poisoning, contaminated water, nerve gas and radio waves, and water companies checked supplies for contamination. Ron Chamberlain, then chairman of the council’s environmental health committee, later said: "We carried out a full, proper and thorough investigation." He is the only official the Registry found named in connection with the conclusion.

The verdict, and the missing document. In the BBC’s 2003 account, "after a brief inquiry the official theory blamed mass hysteria as the most likely cause", and the report "was filed away and forgotten". The Registry could not find the report published or quoted, and found no peer-reviewed medical or epidemiological paper on Hollinwell.

The chemical that is actually named. The pesticide hypothesis, raised about twenty-three years after the event, names tridemorph, a morpholine fungicide sold by BASF as Calixin. Its formula, C19H39NO, contains no phosphorus, so it is not an organophosphate and not a nerve agent. The BBC reported that the World Health Organization classifies it as moderately hazardous, that the chemicals sprayed on the field were thought harmless at the time, and that they have since been banned.

Why nothing can now be tested. No biological or environmental samples from 13 July 1980 survive in any form the Registry could trace. There are no blood or urine results from the 259 casualties in the public record, and no contemporaneous spray records for the adjacent fields. The pesticide hypothesis therefore rests on reasoning about symptoms rather than on measurement.

Leading explanations

Mass psychogenic illness (Ashfield District Council and Nottinghamshire Police, 1980; the official finding, never published). That the collapses were a psychogenic outbreak, spreading by suggestion through a crowd of children, with no toxin or pathogen involved. This is the official conclusion. The Registry found no scientific paper setting it out, and the report itself has not been produced, so it has the standing of an unpublished administrative finding rather than an established result.

Tridemorph inhalation (Ray, around 2003; hypothesis, untested). David Ray of the University of Nottingham’s School of Biomedical Sciences proposed, as the Nottingham Post reports it, that the fungicide sprayed on nearby fields was inhaled and caused the symptoms. The BBC aired the idea in September 2003. The Registry found no peer-reviewed paper setting it out. Ray died in 2010. No 1980 samples exist to test it against.

Food poisoning, contaminated water, nerve gas, radio waves (rejected, 1980). Each was considered and excluded by the original investigation. Water supplies were checked specifically and nothing was found.

What the popular version gets wrong

"Nobody in authority ever looked into it." An investigation was announced in the House of Commons four days after the event, by the Secretary of State, and was carried out jointly by the council and the police. What is missing is the report, not the inquiry.

"It was an organophosphate, or a nerve agent." The compound named in the pesticide hypothesis is tridemorph, a morpholine fungicide containing no phosphorus. Nerve gas was one of the lines the 1980 inquiry explicitly ruled out.

"Three hundred children were hospitalised." About three hundred is the number affected. Two hundred and fifty-nine were taken to hospital, and nine were kept in overnight.

"The official report settles it." The report was filed away, and the Registry could not find it published or quoted. The verdict is known only from later accounts of it.

Current status

Later explained. Mass psychogenic illness is the official conclusion of a joint council and police investigation that excluded food poisoning, contaminated water, nerve gas and radio waves. The Registry classifies the case on that finding, alongside the register’s other episodes of the same kind. Two weaknesses belong on the record. The report was filed away and the Registry could not find it published, so the finding cannot be inspected; and the Registry found no peer-reviewed study of the episode. The pesticide hypothesis remains untested because no samples from the day survive. Production of the 1980 council report, the police file, or any 1980 clinical records showing blood or urine results from the casualties would change this record. Cholinesterase or metabolite results, or contemporaneous spray records naming products and dates for the adjacent fields, would move the pesticide hypothesis from untested to testable.

Sources

  • UK Parliament. "Children’s Band Concert (Nottinghamshire)." House of Commons Written Answers, HC Deb 17 July 1980, vol. 988, cc. 690 to 691W. Read at the Parliament historic Hansard API. Source of the Haynes question, the communities Skinner named and the government’s refusal of a national inquiry.
  • UK Parliament. "Children’s Band Contest (Kirkby in Ashfield)." House of Commons, HC Deb 14 July 1980, vol. 988, col. 1053. Read at the Parliament historic Hansard API. Source of Skinner’s point of order and the Speaker’s reply.
  • BBC. "Inside Out East Midlands: The Hollinwell Incident." Programme page, broadcast 22 September 2003. Read via a public mirror; bbc.co.uk could not be reached from this session. Source of the brief inquiry and the filed report, the water checks, the nine kept overnight, the Bingham quotation, and the classification and later ban of tridemorph.
  • Nanrah, G. (2020). "The Hollinwell Incident: What caused hundreds of children to collapse in a field?" Nottingham Post, 16 July 2020. Read via PressReader. Source of the number affected, the 259 figure, the four hospitals, the matters excluded, the Chamberlain quotation and the attribution of the tridemorph hypothesis to David Ray.
  • DrugFuture chemical database. Entry for tridemorph. Read. Source of the formula, the morpholine structure and the Calixin trade name.
  • Clitheroe, J. (2022). "Site of the Hollinwell Incident." Photograph and record, Geograph Britain and Ireland. Source of the coordinates.

Last reviewed: November 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.

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