LONG before the days of community events and health and safety, most streets would celebrate Guy Fawkes night with their own bonfires.

For youngsters, it meant a lot of hard work collecting wood, fallen tree branches or cast out furniture, protecting the collection from raiders from the next street and climbing high to build it high.

Can you remember waiting impatiently for one of the dad’s to set it going, then enjoying a host of fireworks all set off around the flames, eating treacle toffee and putting potatoes in the embers to bake?

Here are some Blackburn youngsters, with their bonfire before it went up that November 5 in the sixties.