Sanctuary Music Arena

The Sanctuary Music Arena was a 22,000 sq ft, 3,500 capacity music venue in Denbigh North, Milton Keynes in the UK.^[1] It opened its doors on 6 December 1991 to ESP promotions event called Dreamscape. It was also billed as the first and only designer dance venue in the country.

The Sanctuary saw some of the UK's first legal Raves and was pivotal in the development of numerous underground electronic dance music genres, subgenres and styles.^[2] The Sanctuary played host to the UK's biggest dance music promoters, including Dreamscape,^[3] Helter Skelter Rave, Slammin Vinyl, The Cult,^[4] Gatecrasher, Hardcore Heaven, Cream, Uproar, Sidewinder and Godskitchen. The venue attracted a national audience to its legendary 12-hour all night events.

From 1995 onwards various promoters would occasionally use the adjacent "Rollers UK" roller skating rink and the "Fastrack" go-karting area in conjunction with the Sanctuary, creating an 9,000 capacity multi arena venue, one of the largest of its kind in the country. Extra capacity events such as Helter Skelter Energy 97 peaked at over 16,000 up for it ravers

The Sanctuary finally closed its doors on 10 July 2004 in which Slammin Vinyl held the final event with a capacity of 12,000 (a big top arena was added, along with totally open air dance space using ground adjacent to the Sanctuary) with an event that hosted some of the best UK hardcore, Drum & Bass, Old Skool and Hard Dance DJs from across the country. Sadly this legendary venue was subsequently demolished to make way for a new IKEA store^[5] as part of a development that also included the stadium mk and an Asda hypermarket.

References

Coordinates: 52°00′20″N 0°43′50″W / 52.00556°N 0.73056°W / 52.00556; -0.73056