Lewes Bonfire Night Celebrations, East Sussex

Date: 5 November

Location: Lewes is 6 miles north-east of Brighton.

On 5 November or Guy Fawkes Day we are celebrating the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, when a group of men laid gunpowder in the cellars of the Palace of Westminster iii London with the intention of destroying the King and the Houses of Lords and Commons, all of whom would be assembled for the Opening of Parliament. Guy Fawkes was the man chosen to light the fuse, but the authorities were ‘tipped off’ and he was arrested on 5 November.

This Catholic-inspired plot caused an upsurge of anti-Catholic feeling throughout the country, which is still retained in the Lewes ceremony, probably because during the reign of Mary I, seventeen Protestants were burnt there as heretics. Until recently, an effigy of the Pope was burnt along with one of Guy P'awkes. 'Phere are several separate torchlit processions at Lewes, each representing a different Bonfire Society, with the participants in fancy dress, and one of them appears as the Pope. During the last century huge fires were lit in the town centre and lighted tar-barrels rolled through the streets, the whole occasion being potentially very dangerous, and rioting ensued wTen the authorities tried to stop the celebrations altogether, so a safer compromise was worked out, and the celebrations thrive today.

Elsewhere in Britain, of course, thousands of local bonfires are lit on 5 November, ranging from the small garden bonfires attended by a single family, to the huge municipal events. Nearly four hundred years after the Gunpowder Plot the central events are still remembered in the effigies of Guy P'awkes which are made by children and burned on the bonfires, but it is not indignation over the Plot which has ensured the survival of this now-traditional custom, but rather the instinctive attraction which a bonfire holds for us all, young and old alike. In Sheffield, where six public bonfires have been burned annually

In the major parks since 1969, it was found that in 1981 a minimum of 60,000 people attended the public bonfires, that is one in eight of Sheffield residents; and many others attended smaller local bonfires.