About Worthing Bonfire Society
Worthing Bonfire Society represents Worthing, West Sussex, a town with an extraordinary – and at times notoriously disorderly – history of Bonfire celebrations.
Worthing’s nineteenth-century Bonfire Boys were responsible for some of the most serious Guy Fawkes Night disturbances recorded on the Sussex coast. Tar barrels, blackened faces, political and religious effigies and confrontations with the police all feature in the town’s history.
The modern Worthing Bonfire Society is much quieter publicly than many neighbouring organisations, but it continues to be listed among the Bonfire societies represented within the wider tradition.
Its existence adds another chapter to a Worthing Bonfire story stretching back well over 170 years.
The Bonfire Boys of Worthing
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Bonfire Night in Worthing had developed a particularly unruly reputation.
In 1852, a mob of Worthing Bonfire Boys appeared with blackened faces, staves, blazing tar barrels and threatening banners, causing serious disorder around the town.
The following year, the Bonfire Boys burned an effigy of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster following the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England.
Such political and religious effigies were common elements of nineteenth-century Bonfire protest, but Worthing became particularly noted for the intensity of its disturbances.
The Riot of 1877
Tensions between Worthing's Bonfire Boys and the authorities eventually erupted into serious violence.
In 1877, Bonfire Night saw major rioting and confrontation with the police.
The disturbances reflected a wider culture of resentment against authority that had surrounded nineteenth-century Bonfire celebrations in several Sussex towns.
Worthing, however, developed an especially strong reputation for confrontation.
Rather than being merely an evening of fireworks and celebration, Bonfire could provide an opportunity for local grievances and tensions to spill onto the streets.
The Bonfire Club of 1880
An important development came in 1880, when an organised Bonfire Club was launched in Worthing.
The club represented an attempt to give structure to the town’s Bonfire activity, but its history soon became entangled with another remarkable episode in Worthing’s past.
Within only a few years, some of the same men would become associated with the town's notorious Skeleton Army.
From Bonfire Boys to the Skeleton Army
When the Salvation Army arrived in Worthing in 1883, it encountered fierce opposition.
The Bonfire Club evolved into the Worthing Excelsior Skeleton Army, an anti-Salvationist group whose members attempted to disrupt Salvation Army marches and meetings.
The conflict escalated dramatically.
In August 1884, Worthing experienced an outbreak of mob violence so serious that troops had to be called in to restore order.
It is one of the more extraordinary examples of Bonfire culture spilling into wider nineteenth-century social conflict.
The Worthing Bonfire Boys therefore occupy a particularly unusual place in local history: the organised Bonfire movement became connected with disturbances extending far beyond the Fifth of November.
Bonfire Trouble Returns in the 1950s
Worthing's Victorian disturbances eventually faded, but the town witnessed another period of serious disorder around Bonfire Night during the late 1950s.
Large groups of young people – many described at the time as Teddy Boys – gathered in the town.
In 1959, crowds confronted police, threw bricks and bottles and set fire to shops, resulting in numerous arrests.
The incidents were widely interpreted as a return of the riotous spirit that had characterised Worthing's nineteenth-century Bonfire Boys.
They also demonstrate that the association between 5 November and public disorder remained unusually persistent in Worthing.
Bonfire in Worthing Today
Modern Bonfire Night in Worthing bears little resemblance to the disturbances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The town now hosts a large 5 November fireworks display from Worthing Pier, with no traditional town-centre torchlit procession or bonfire forming part of that public event. The 2025 display, for example, was organised by Worthing Lions and the Worthing Town Centre Initiative.
Worthing Bonfire Society exists separately from that large public fireworks celebration.
Current Bonfire directories continue to list Worthing Bonfire Society among the societies associated with the tradition.
This distinction is useful: Worthing's highly visible pier fireworks should not automatically be treated as an event organised by Worthing Bonfire Society.
Worthing and the Wider Bonfire Community
Worthing is geographically further west than the concentration of societies around Lewes, Hastings and the eastern part of Sussex.
Its Bonfire links nevertheless extend eastwards through the wider society network.
Nearby Littlehampton Bonfire Society remains one of the major West Sussex participants, while Worthing-based musicians also regularly support the processions.
For example, Celebration Samba is based in Worthing and performs at Bonfire Society and Carnival processions throughout Sussex.
That means Worthing continues to contribute people and organisations to the wider Bonfire season even though the town's modern public 5 November celebration has taken a different form.
A Remarkable Local History
Worthing's Bonfire past is striking because it reflects a very different world from today's organised celebrations.
The 1852 Bonfire Boys marched with blazing tar barrels and blackened faces. In 1877, the town witnessed serious clashes with police. Three years later an organised Bonfire Club was created, only for its story to become intertwined with the anti-Salvationist Skeleton Army.
By 1884, the resulting unrest had become serious enough for troops to be called into Worthing.
Then, more than 70 years later, the town again saw major disturbances when crowds fought police and fires were started during the 1959 Guy Fawkes celebrations.
Those episodes make Worthing one of the more dramatic chapters in the history of Bonfire on the Sussex coast.
Worthing Bonfire Society
The modern society has a considerably lower public profile than organisations such as Littlehampton, Seaford or Hastings.
Current sources confirm Worthing Bonfire Society as one of the named societies within the Bonfire community, but I have not found a reliable official history establishing its formation date, Pioneer costume, membership structure or a current home procession.
For that reason, those details are best left out rather than reconstructed from unsourced online lists.
What can be said with confidence is that the modern society carries a name attached to an extraordinary local history.
From Tar Barrels to Pier Fireworks
Worthing's relationship with Bonfire has changed dramatically over the generations.
Victorian Bonfire Boys filled the streets with tar barrels, effigies and confrontation. The town's Bonfire Club later became entangled with the Skeleton Army riots, while the late 1950s saw another outbreak of violence around Guy Fawkes Night.
Today, Worthing's most visible November celebration is a family fireworks display from the pier, while Worthing Bonfire Society maintains the town's name within the wider society tradition.
The contrast could hardly be greater.
From blazing tar barrels and Victorian riots to fireworks illuminating Worthing Pier, the town has one of the most dramatic and unusual Bonfire histories anywhere along the Sussex coast.