AS Furness gets ready to celebrate Bonfire Night we are taking a look back through the Mail’s archive at community events held since the 1980s.

More than 2,000 people watched the Barrow night skies light up with fireworks in 1989 for a display staged by Barrow Round Table at Craven Park rugby league ground.

The Mail noted: "A team of seven Round Table members were kept busy lighting the fireworks for a huge display.

"For the first time the Round Table had music on the bill with Barrow duo One for the Road — Bobby Rigg and Mike Puleo."

Organised fireworks displays at Barrow in 1994 included events at Barrow Wanderers in Lesh Lane, the Tally Ho at Schneider Road, and Vulcan Road Residents Association.

That year, police in Barrow decided to have a crackdown on youngsters collecting cash with their models of Guy Fawkes.

A "nuisance patrol" was tasked with moving the youngsters from outside supermarkets and pubs.

In 1996 Guy Fawkes celebrations were greeted by a deluge of rain with carnival band participants getting a soaking at an event at Craven Park.

The Mail noted: "The Barracudas braved the elements in full costume to produce an impressive show about a UFO landing.

"The hearts of the spectators went out to the smallest Barracudas who seemed barely able to move as the rain poured down.

"The music had a funky 70s feel to it, later followed by a familiar little ditty from the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

"The shivering crowds huddled together in the stands, only daring to come out when the fireworks started."

At Ulverston, more than 2,000 people faced howling winds as the fireworks went up at the Hill Foot Garden Centre at Ulverston.

Magistrates heard in 1957 that youngsters preparing for Bonfire Night had chopped down 13 trees and damaged five others in an ornamental garden behind Thrum Street, Barrow.

The biggest crowd for a Barrow bonfire was probably on September 19 in 1867, following the opening of the town’s Devonshire Dock by the Duke of Devonshire.

An estimated 25,000 watched the blaze.

The Lancaster Gazette, published on November 5 in 1825, carried an appeal to all its readers in the old North Lancashire, Furness and Westmorland to be careful after a 16-year-old schoolboy from Blackburn lost a hand amusing himself by casting gunpowder out of a flask into a household fire which "produced a most tremendous explosion.”

The Lancaster Gazette in 1827 noted that a young man called Rallinson had been very seriously injured above the left eye by the accidental discharge of a pistol at the Kirkby Lonsdale bonfire.

The article said: “The ancient custom of celebrating the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot is maintained in that town in a style elsewhere unknown.”