Apparently (according to the message on the back of the photo) the above bonfire burned for two weeks! Having just been down on the prom to watch the fireworks I can’t see the last embers of this years bonfire lasting until the morning.
The back of the old photo kindly sent in by Ian Davies is dated 1914 and also has the caption “Coronation Bonfire”. Excuse my poor history knowledge but what was the coronation in question?
There’s not much in the shot to help date the scene but taking 1914 as a terminus ante quem the most likely coronation in question is that of George V three years earlier.
Thinking on, there was a coronation in September of 1914 – a Papal one, that of Benedict XV. However, even given that the North West (and the Liverpool area in particular) is perhaps the most Catholic part of England, I doubt the bonfire is being built for that reason.
The weeks before Bonfire night meant that the local lads would go around town with carts, old prams, anything that you could haul wood, branches basically anything that would burn down Trinity road to the Bonfire on the beach.
Clark Brothers would unload their lorries onto the beach so we could build it higher and bigger than last year.
Problem…The bigger it got the more likely the lads from Meols would come an steal our hoard. Their Bonfire was at the end of Forest Rd. What ever they got we would have to go and rob it back.
Then there was problem number two…the Autumn high tides that would come up to the sea wall at the bottom of Trinity Rd. All hands would lash as much as we could to the rails on the prom..One year the Bonfire was so big there was a room inside.
So why was the bonfire at the bottom of Trinity Rd and not further up by the Baths were the tide didn’t come up to the wall?… So the children in the Convalescent home could watch the Bonfire… We were so considerate back then.
November 6th..get up early and go down on the shore and find all the dud fireworks. The things we did with the duds would make your hair stand on end.
I think Constable Keith Wenlock ( Happy Harry ) of the Hoylake Constabulary went on leave those two days.
Hi Kevin
The Bonny that you refer to was for the Ellen Gonner home and it was known as Crofts Bonfire (the newsagents in Grove Road), because he supposedly sponsered it. I remember one year when we were collecting driftwood a guy on the prom telling us we could take his gates as he was replacing them for the bonny. He excitedly came running down the prom a couple of hours later as we were cooking spuds and enjoying the warm glow from the gates beside the actual bonfire, to find that we had taken his brand new gates and left the old ones behind, of course they were well ablaze by now and there was nothing he could do.
hi martin i think my brother steve was with you when you nicked the gates we had the police round at our house when we lived in Dovedale. The things we used to get up to around ‘bonny’ night were crazy but no one got hurt ‘ fun times’.
Dave Cottriall