Selected event · source timeline

The Clash — 27 May 1977

Chancellor Hall, Chelmsford · White Riot Tour

Archive position: The current event date is 27 May 1977. The surviving ticket is the primary dating evidence. The older 29 May date is preserved only as a legacy discrepancy so that the history of the archive's correction is not lost.

What the sources give us

1 · Surviving ticket — strongest date evidence

A surviving Chancellor Hall ticket is held in Maurice Hyde's material. The ticket is the direct object evidence used for the current 27 May 1977 date.

Open the event record · Open the Flickr ticket source

2 · Flickr provenance

Maurice Hyde / themaninthejar titles the Flickr item “The Clash Ticket May 27th 1977 Chelmsford Chancellor Hall”. This provides an independent online route back to the photographed surviving ticket and its provenance.

Flickr Primary Sources

3 · Three first-hand recollections

Ash (July 2010), Duncan Egleton (June 2010) and Maurice Hyde each describe the night from personal memory. Their accounts overlap on important elements of the occasion but differ in emphasis and detail. They are therefore preserved separately.

Read the recollections

4 · Memory and evidence kept apart

Remembered songs, rumours, behaviour, crowd atmosphere and the identity of people present are useful oral-history evidence, but they are not automatically promoted to documentary fact. Where a memory is uncertain, that uncertainty stays visible.

Open the Evidence & Memory Crosswalk · Memory Detail Index

What we can say confidently

Confirmed archive date

27 May 1977. The surviving ticket is the primary basis for the selected event record.

Venue

Chancellor Hall, Chelmsford.

Tour

White Riot Tour. The surviving material and recollections place the show in that tour context.

Personal testimony

Three named first-hand accounts are preserved as oral history, without merging them into a single supposedly definitive memory.

The old 29 May date

Some earlier Chelmsford Rocks material carried 29 May 1977. That date is not deleted from the research history: it is retained as a legacy discrepancy. It is no longer used as the selected event date because the surviving ticket gives 27 May 1977.

The Clash poster for Chancellor Hall, Chelmsford, advertising Sunday 29 May; no year is printed — The Tony Rupp “new wave rock in concert” poster advertises The Clash at Chancellor Hall, Chelmsford, on Sunday 29 May, with doors at 7:30 p.m.; the poster does not print a year. The surviving ticket gives 27 May 1977 and remains the selected event date.
Open the preserved poster source.

The Clash — 27 May 1977 source image, 33421.jpg — The Tony Rupp “new wave rock in concert” poster advertises The Clash at Chancellor Hall, Chelmsford, on Sunday 29 May, with doors at 7:30 p.m.; the poster does not print a year. The surviving ticket gives 27 May 1977 and remains the selected event date.
Open the preserved poster source.

Next evidence worth finding

Contemporary Chancellor Hall advertising for the exact date.
Other surviving tickets or programmes from the White Riot Tour stop.
Contemporary local newspaper listings or reviews.
Further photographs, posters or attendee memories that can be tied to the event without guessing.

Finding new corroboration would strengthen the record; it should not overwrite the surviving ticket without a clear reason.