A music festival which has split a community near Pewsey has sold out even before it gets started this weekend.

People living near the Barge Inn at Honeystreet tried to get Honeyfest stopped by complaining about its licence but last month Wiltshire Council agreed it could go ahead, Now a new beer has been brewed in its honour and the green brew is said to glow in the dark.

For years the pub has been regarded as the headquarters of the “croppies”, the hundreds of people who visit the area each year for its crop circles which were once just a local phenomenon but now attract visitors from all over the world.

In 2010 a campaign to buy the Barge as a community owned pub won a massive National Lottery windfall of £430,000 which, together with other grants enabled the Barge Inn Community Project to buy its leasehold when Adrian and June Potts who had run the pub for 17 years retired and put it on the market.

The canal side pub has been closed for the past few weeks to enable a major refurbishment to take place and it will re-open with a bang on Saturday with the music festival which was an instant success with all 1,250 tickets being sold within hours of being advertised.

Sandra Bhatia who has spearheaded the community buy-out and the refurbishment had planned to hold the Honeyfest in December but had to postpone it because ice and snow would have prevented many people reaching the venue.

So it’s taking place on Saturday in the field next to the pub with an open air stage and some international and nationally known acts. Heading the bill is the American singer/songwriter Damien Rice together with the Indie-pop band The Magic Numbers; folk star and 2011 BRIT award winner Laura Marling;Marthas and Arthurs who have been making a name for themselves on the British festival scene and the all-male five-man group Dry The River.

Local acts will be the bands Slagerij who won a recent Battle of the Bands contest at the barge together with Matthew Kilford, a Swindon singer/songwriter.

Sandra Bhatia said the organisers’ hope that the festival would be a success was confirmed when all 1,250 £35 tickets were sold out.

She said: “It would have been a sell-out three times over if we could have made the tickets available. As it is we have a massive waiting list and we have even had begging letters from people who are desperate to attend.

“From the inquiries we have been getting it seems the whole country has been looking for tickets,” she said adding that the newly refurbished pub complete with a enlarged bar, new oak floor and redecoration throughout by Pewsey building company AG.

Because of the pub’s connection with the crop-circle enthusiast its owner Ian McIvor has commissioned a special beer to mark the event called appropriately Alien Abduction which, said Ms Bhatia, is green in colour “and is said to glow”.

There has been concern from local residents about the size of the event but Ms Bhatia said it was definitely a one-off to launch the re-vamped pub and she had given an assurance it would not be repeated.