The Sanctuary: the Milton Keynes shed that hosted a million ravers, now an IKEA
Built speculatively for indoor cricket, used instead to host roughly a million ravers over thirteen years - and the flatpack furniture store that stands there now.
A cricket venue that never hosted cricket
The building in Denbigh North was designed in 1989 and put up in 1990 on spec to host indoor cricket. No cricket tenant ever came. What filled it instead was ESP Promotions, run by Murray Beetson, who needed a bigger room after his existing nights outgrew their venues - and in December 1991 the space hosted the first Dreamscape rave.
Dreamscape itself had started that same year as ESP Promotions events at The Roadmender and then Milwaukee's, before the move to Denbigh North gave it the room to become one of the defining multi-arena raves of the era.
The Sanctuary years
At 22,000 square feet and a 3,500 capacity, the venue - which took the name Sanctuary Music Arena - went on to host Helter Skelter, Fantazia, Gatecrasher, Slammin Vinyl and Garage Nation across its run, alongside Dreamscape itself. The Prodigy played there. Estimates put total attendance across its life at around a million people.
Murray Beetson did not see the venue through to its close. He died in a car accident on 17 March 1996, five years before Sanctuary itself stopped running - a loss that came in the middle of the very scene he had built a room for.
Closure, and the IKEA that replaced it
The Sanctuary closed on 10 July 2004, and the building was demolished along with the surrounding units to make way for a new IKEA store. In September 2008, a group of former ravers staged a flashmob inside the newly opened shop as a tribute to what had stood there - dancing, briefly, in the soft furnishings section of the exact site where Dreamscape once ran twelve-hour sessions.
Dreamscape itself outlived the building: the brand has returned for reunion events in the years since, including a Milton Keynes anniversary show, carrying the name of a rave that started in a cricket shed forward long after the shed became a furniture shop.