THE emergence of the acid house genre of music in the mid-to-late Eighties gave birth to a whole new kind of party culture.

For a generation of clubbers, the late Eighties and early Nineties meant weekends meeting up in meadows, fields and rusty warehouses to party with like-minded people.

Essex was a hotbed for acid house raves, with areas around the M25 particularly popular for parties.

But raves popped up at locations across the county, as these pictures from the Echo archives show.

Ultimately, the Government's controversial Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, introduced in 1994, would prove to be the end for popularity of rave culture, as new trespass and nuisance laws made it easier for police to shut down parties.