Mary in vanguard of mass walkout

Mrs Hamilton quit last week after the festival society signed an agreement with the castle trustees, which commits the festival to no longer staging events in the open-air theatre beneath the castle walls.

Instead, the trustees will run their own entertainments programme during the festival week. To help the festival society clear its debts, the trustees have also agreed to a one-off, 50,000 payment.

But Mrs Hamilton said this week that other conditions in the agreement, and particularly the block on competing events, had forced her to quit, and also led to the resignations of other leading members of the festival team, its entire sound and lighting crews and the "heavy brigade" stage team.

The agreement, she added, also gave the castle trustees access to the festival's long-established mailing list, and stipulated that all information for the press would be subject to "mutual approval".

In a joint statement with festival producer John Harris, Mrs Hamilton said the decisions made by the castle trustees had been all the more difficult to bear after the festival society made every effort to co-operate with them for the 2005 festival.

"We put a proposal to the castle trustees to outline ways in which we could work more closely together, sharing our experiences and reducing costs, but the castle rejected this immediately.

"Undaunted, we believed that in 2005 we had created a festival that achieved not only our artistic goals but met the castle's requirements on car parking and the removal of the "pop" concerts. This makes the resulting decisions even harder to understand.

"We can speculate endlessly about why the castle have taken the stance they have. They expressed concern about our finances (which, as an entirely separate charity, should not really be their worry), but our deficit was manageable and would have been far less had we not had to move to Fontwell for much of the 2005 festival.

"They had issues with our programme, so we moved the "louder" concerts to a separate venue at their request.

The 2004 Shake-speare production was not to everyone's taste, so we created an entirely classic interpretation for 2005 (Romeo and Juliet) which has been warmly received in Southampton and is about to tour to Salisbury and Barbados."

Mrs Hamilton and Mr Harris said they could speak highly enough of the festival board, under the leadership of Dr James Walsh, who, faced with an "almost impossible situation", had brokered the deal with the castle trustees and secured the substantial donation.

They also pay tribute to the festival's army of volunteers, without whom the festivities could not go ahead. Many had now resigned, along with Patrick Sandford, the festival's Shakespeare director, Stewart Collins, artistic adviser, Mike Walker, sound adviser, and Mr Harris.

However, Mrs Hamilton and Mr Harris remained committed to "leading a team that will produce outdoor events of the highest quality, be they Shakespeare, concerts or Street Theatre".

They added: "We would love to have continued to do these in Arundel which is, in almost every respect, a perfect town for a festival. We know that the creative spirit that flourishes in the town will generate events of style and panache next summer, attracting visitors and pleasing residents in the true spirit of 'festival'. . .

"We, too, have plans for the future and look forward to keeping in touch with the very many people who have supported the festival over so many years. Watch this space!"