Bonfires and toffee

[ladyofastolat]

Does anyone else have a tradition of eating black treacle toffee on November 5th, and calling it "Bonfire Toffee"? I was brought up with this, but haven't encountered anyone here "down south" that knows about this tradition, and it wasn't shared by any of my childhood friends in Gloucestershire. (Just to complicate matters, Pellinor remembers eating Bonfire toffee, but that was cinder toffee, not black treacle.) While my childhood Halloween traditions owe a lot to the Scottish half of my family, I think that the Bonfire night ones come from my mother, who's from Derbyshire. I've found lots of references to Bonfire toffee online, but nothing about what regions the tradition comes from, so I'd be interested to know if people used to eat it, or not, and whereabouts that was.

We never used to set off fireworks in our garden... though we did once get someone else's spent rocket fall into the garden so violently that it went about four inches into the grass. This has given me a lifelong nervousness around fireworks, since I worry what such a thing would do to my head. I prefer to watch them from inside, or else, as with the Cowes Week fireworks, to be safely on land while they get sent off from a barge out at sea. I was always scared of sparklers, too. I thought they'd burn down and eat my hand. To this day, I still hate matches, and can only light them if they're long matches, and even then only with much shying and squeaking.

Anyway... we used to have indoor fireworks, which were rather pathetic little things, really, but I liked them when I was about five. I remember "snake in the grass", where a strange snake-like thing pushed itself out of some green froth. I'd like to see a box of indoor fireworks again, just for old times' sake. I'd have to get Pellinor to light the match, though. Yes, I freely admit it: I am a wimp.

Comments

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I know I've heard about it somewhere - I think in a book. Millie-Molly-Mandy??

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I'll check Milly Molly Mandy at work today. (I've not read them, but probably should have.)

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Nope never heard of no toffee in Sussex. I have bought indoor fireworks when in the early 90's my then partner had a maisonette. I haven't seen them about in shops in a very long time though and it is getting harder to find shops that sell fireworks. Next year I may end up relying on the local asian shops which stock them for Diwali.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

No-one on the Isle of Wight seemed to have had trouble finding places to buy fireworks. They were going off constantly on all sides of us last night, and Saturday, and Friday, from 6 until 11 - every bang followed by a chorus of barking from all the terrified dogs in the neighbourhood. Never having tried to buy fireworks, though, I don't know where they're getting them from.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

In Swansea, we had a neighbourhood bonfire party: I think some people used to make treacle toffee for that, but we used to make Bonfire Toffee to the recipe from Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit book, which was a sweet buttery toffee with rosemary in it (most people liked this much better than the treacle toffee!).

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Interesting about Alison Uttley. She came from Derbyshire, and most of her books were set in the area where she grew up, so this has somewhat exploded by theory that black treacle Bonfire Toffee is a Derbyshire thing.

Ah! I've just found a website that says that treacle toffee is a Bonfire Night tradition of "the north of England, especially Yorkshire." Though a Lancashire website claims that Bonfire toffee belongs to them.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

It might have been Alison Uttley that I heard about it from - my mum used to read me the Little Grey Rabbits when I was very small, and one of her favourite books was A Country Child. I grew up on Milly Molly Mandy too - I remember a bonfire story, but it wasn't Guy Fawkes, I think. There was a GF story, too, though, so that could still have been where I got it from. Interestingly, the time when we were reading MMM was the period we were living on the IOW (in Seaview - I went to Osborne House School)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I checked Milly Molly Mandy today, and couldn't find any toffee, though there was a story about making a Guy. (I didn't have time to read it, though.) Some relatives of mine used to live about two miles from Alison Uttley's childhood home. I hadn't read A Country Child then, but I had read a couple of extracts from it, included in an Alison Uttley anthology. I found it really exciting to see the actual places described.

(Mmm.. Must seek that anthology out when I visit my parents in a couple of weeks. The nostalgia for it is suddenly very strong indeed. "Magic in my pocket," I think it was called. I also had "The little knife that did all the work". I didn't read Little Grey Rabbit, for some reason, but I did like Sam Pig. I hope they're still in my parents' loft.)

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Oh my! I had "Magic in my pocket"! (and probably still do, on my puffin shelf) I liked the Sam Pig stories, too :) I'm at work now, but will look it out when I get home - you've made me come over all nostalgic, too...

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Thorntons certainly sell 'bonfire toffee', but I must admit it's not something I was previously aware of.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

A-ha! Thorntons is a Derby company, thus reinforcing all over again my belief that this is a Derbyshire tradition. I remember when Thorntons chocolates were one of the real treats of our regular trips of Derby - when the shop only existed there, and hadn't yet expanded across the country.