The present Society was formed in 1952 in time to participate in Littlehampton's Coronation celebrations the following year.

On the 14th November 1953 the town's first organised bonfire celebrations were held since the demise of the Victorian Bonfire Boys in 1905. Two years later, the Society's celebrations were the first Bonfire Celebrations to be televised by the BBC.

The Society was honoured in 1977 by being invited, with the Association of Sussex Bonfire & Carnival Societies, to attend the Official Silver Jubilee Celebrations in Windsor Great Park in the presence of HM the Queen and other members of the Royal Family. Two years later came a further invitation to attend 'Carols for The Queen' at Buckingham Palace to mark the end of The Year of The Child.

The Society's celebrations had a French flavour in 1982 when Littlehampton was twinned with Chennevieres-sur-Marne on bonfire night.

The Society was also invited to and took part in the Great St John’s Party which celebrated the centenary of the St John Ambulance Brigade in Hyde Park in 1987.

For many years on each January 1st, members from Littlehampton Bonfire Society along with other bonfire societies from the Sussex Association could be found attending the New Year’s Day parade in London in full bonfire costumes.

Over the years the Society’s costumes have changed into the now established costumes of North American Indians and Tudors. The high standard of these costumes has lead the Society to be judged as the best dressed Society visiting bonfire celebrations in Sussex for 5 years (in 1998, 2002, 2004, 2006 & 2007). Also in recent years the Society has adopted the guise of the Sussex Smuggler in distinctive colours of Red and Yellow for torch marshals and working members.

Today the Society is one of the few surviving societies in West Sussex and members travel hundreds of miles every year to support celebrations throughout Sussex, as well as ensuring that the tradition of their own celebrations is upheld.

An insight into the early years:

Littlehampton Bonfire Society was refounded in 1952 with the object of 'providing an evening of spectacular entertainment as a means of raising money for local good causes', keeps alive some of the customs of earlier celebrations. But not all of them, which is perhaps as well, for it got pretty hot in the town on some Guy Fawkes Nights in the distant past.

As in 1860, for instance, a year in which, says the West Sussex Gazette, the demonstrations surpassed all former ones. 'A cavalcade of performers and lookers on included a large number of men dressed up as beauties. It was of more than usual dimensions by the arrival, a day or two before, of a large fleet of ships in the port. Not content with burning, with the usual trundling through the streets, some 30 tar barrels and letting off squibs, rockets etc., a large fishing boat was, at llpm, drawn from the river and set on fire in Surrey Street, opposite the White Hart Inn. When this was completely in flames it was thought desirable to have another. This being quickly accomplished the fire was redoubled in strength to the great alarm of many ladies and people living in properties surrounding the flames. Fortunately the wind was in the best direction and by 11.30pm all was safe'.

Ten years later nothing more than usual occurred 'but a low party of young men, disguised, levied contributions and, after much drinking, conducted themselves in a disgraceful manner breaking many panes of glass at the Marine Hotel and doing other damage as well by disorderly conduct on the premises.'

Behaviour improved with the formation of the first Littlehampton Bonfire Society, which disbanded in 1906. Copies of some of its programmes have survived, and can be seen in the town's museum, including one for the 1904 annual carnival, containing the text of the speech delivered by the Beadle before the bonfire on the Green. It was addressed to 'Ladies and gents, friends, growlers and others' and touched on such topics as the improvements to the railway station and promenade, the new public lavatory, the fact that the parish church clock had not chimed for the past four months and the scheme to build a bridge over the Arun.

That year the grand procession, which started from the Gratwicke Hotel, included mounted men in costume, Vikings and Crusaders, Littlehampton Fire Brigade, fully equipped with engine, Arundel Borough Fire Brigade, The Dark Town' Fire Brigade, a comic tableau and a national tableau and 'members in fanciful and grotesque costumes'.

Now, some ninety years later, the costumes have changed but the 'boys' are back on parade. Fearsome Zulu warriors and Red Indian resplendent in fine feathered headdresses were in the 1993 grand torchlight procession the 41st of the 'new' Littlehampton Bonfire Society with bands, brightly illuminated floats, a Miss Bonfire, Sir Marmaduke Rawdon's Regiment of the Sealed Knot and the Sompting Village Morris. Members from ten visiting societies, with their banners and in costume, joined in the fun and, after the bonfire on the Green and a grand firework display the proceedings finished with the traditional bonfire prayers. From that one evening's entertainment local charities received £2,655.

Its tenth celebrations, in 1962, were a little more controversial. Cause of the trouble was what the local paper described as THAT TRAM'. For twenty one years a derelict tram, built in 1905 and the last one to run in Bournemouth, from where it was retired in 1935, had been used as a store at a Littlehampton garage. Before it joined the motor trade it had, according to local legend, housed a serviceman and his family during the war and then been converted into a houseboat and launched onto the Arun — where it sank.

The garage proprietor, having no further use for it, offered the tram to the bonfire society. Take it and burn it,' he said. 'No, stop, it is worth preserving,' said David Kay, history master at a Littlehampton school and a vintage transport enthusiast. He enlisted the help of, among others, the Tramways Museum Society, but it was not able, at that time, to take on the tram as a restoration project. However it was keen to have as many of the fittings from it as Mr Kay could remove.

Take what you want,' said the bonfire society as it prepared to trundle the tram, at the rate of a yard a minute, to the Green. But before he has a chance to do so the tram had joined six pianos, a boat and some railway sleepers on the bonfire and its coloured glass, which Mr Kay particularly wanted to save, had been smashed.

On October 27 the 20ft high bonfire, described by the Littlehampton Gazette, which had been running the tram story for weeks, as 'the most publicised Littlehampton has ever had,' was lit by the marchers tossing their flaming torches into the heart of the fire. 'We burn to do good,' is the society's motto. Mr Kay did not agree . . .