huge fires along england...

[cap'n spanky]

I seem to remember a while back, maybe in the 70's or early 80's there was an occasion where people gathered together and constucted huge bonfires all in a line up the UK to celebrate something.. Does anyone have any more info on this? It wasn't to do with bonfire night or foot and mouth pyres, it was something totally different...

[ipek]

In 1977 they lit beacons across the whole country to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee, but not all at the same time. The first was lit by HRH then when the person at the second beacon saw the flames, they lit their fire and so on across the country. They did the same in 2002 for the Golden Jubilee, I believe.

[FredPuli]

The idea was to recreate an ancient way of sending news. In 1588, for example, the news of the Spanish Armada was sent across England in this way so that even a place as distant from the South coast as York knew of it within 12 hours.. Even today the iron frames for the braziers used for this purpose may still be seen on some of the church towers, particularly in flat East Anglia where the towers were invariably the highest points for many miles. The use of bonfires on high ground was simply a festive extension of this once important and serious practice.

[Spongebob]

Beacons were used since Norman times to warn of impending invasion, you can still see them scattered about the country ( there is one near us at Halifax ); Loads of info on this BBC site :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/features
/malverns/new_malverns_beacons.shtml

[jenstar]

That's interesting, because I don't remember the silver jubilee celebrations but I do remember the sort of thing the cap'n mentions. My first thought was that it was done for the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book in 1986, but I think FredPuli's hit the nail on the head and it was actually for the 400th anniversary of the Spanish Armada in 1988.