Posters modelled on a 19th century advertisement of The Farnham Bonfire Club’s celebration of the 260th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot appeared across Farnham last week - promoting last weekend’s Farnham Fireworks and Torchlit Procession.

The 1865 original, sold as part of a collection of posters by Parker Fine Art Auctions last November, revealed Guy Fawkes wasn’t the only notorious wrong-un burnt on the ceremonial pyre - which was then lit in Old Market Place at the foot of Castle Street.

The poster announced: “Once more we are near the Memorial Day, and once more it is the intention to celebrate it in the usual style, by hanging and burning the effigies of Count Eulenburg, a Prussian officer in the Hussard, who barbarously murdered M. Ott, (late Cook to H.R.H. Prince Alfred), in the street, at Bonn, on the 4th of August.”

Fawkes, “the old and noted enemy of our British Parliament”, would also get his traditional comeuppance and the occasion also served to “bring fresh to our memories that great Battle that was won by the Allied Troops, at Inkerman, Nov. 5th, 1854” just a decade earlier.

Townsfolk were summoned to meet in Castle Street at six o’clock, form into a procession and set off at half-past, “headed by the Farnham Town Band, with torches, Roman candles, Bengal and coloured lights, Jack-in-the-Boxes, fancy fireworks, banner, bannerettes, and proceed through all the principal streets of the town, and then return to the fire”.

The procession’s ‘Commander-in-Chief’ would then bring “as prisoners the above-named Prussian officer and Guy Fawkes, where they will be destroyed by fireworks and their wretched remains to be cast therein, the band playing and company singing Rule Brittannia”.

Banners were also to be presented by the inhabitants of Farnham, declaring: ‘Britons stick to your colours’, ‘Be merry and wise and do not mischief’, ‘Keep up the old charter’, ‘Supported by voluntary contributions’, and ‘God save the Queen’.

Funds were “respectfully solicited” to enable “a few lively Friends of Farnham to celebrate this memorable day by rational enjoyment and rejoicing”.

And in a nod to the unruliness of bonfire nights, the 1865 poster issued an order that “no fireworks are to be let off in any street in the town until after six o’clock on the evening of the Sixth of November, and by no means before that day”.

It added: “Any person or persons found wilfully breaking windows, or doing damage of any kind, will be immediately given over to the police.”

The 1865 event was delayed to November 6 as the 5th fell on a Sunday, and likewise this year’s Farnham Fireworks and Torchlit Procession, organised by Farnham Round Table, was shifted forwards to Saturday, November 2. What an amazing event it was, too.

In a nice little nod to the past, the modern recreation requested that, “by order of the Bonfire Committee (aka Farnham Round Table) it is requested that all able members of our town form a procession from Waggon Yard in an orderly fashion with flaming torches aloft no later than 6.15pm.”

It added that the “Scottish piperband from Reading will be in attendance for all to march to the sounds of pipes”, and the “most esteemed mayor of Farnham; Brodie Mauluka will be in attendance at the head of the procession which is led by the head of the Bonfire Committee, the honourable gentleman Alex Donald”.

“Once the procession is past the Castle and into the Park of Farnham, the burning of the effigies will commence shortly thereafter at the fire and in attendance will see much joy in the burning of the enemy of the bonfire. This will be accompanied by drums from the company of the town’s Taiko drummers.”

It concludes: “Fancy fireworks and rockets of all varieties will thereafter be launched above the park for enjoyment of all. Further merriment will be incurred from the band Late to the Party.”

We hope you saw the show!