Eleventh Night

When King William landed at Carrickfergus in 1690, his supporters across Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, lit bonfires to celebrate.

[7] There is also a belief that the bonfires commemorate the lighting of fires on the hills of counties Antrim and Down to help Williamite ships navigate through Belfast Lough at night.

[8] Traditionally, both Catholics and Protestants in Ulster lit bonfires at Midsummer, May Day (Bealtaine) and Halloween (Samhain), which were non-sectarian.

[9] Eleventh Night bonfires are built mostly of wooden pallets and lumber by local young men and boys.

They begin gathering and stacking the material weeks beforehand, and often keep watch at the bonfire site overnight to ensure they are "not lit prematurely by saboteurs".

[15] During the Troubles, loyalist paramilitary groups like the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) used Eleventh Night bonfires to hold "shows of strength", which involved masked gunmen firing volleys of shots into the air.

[19] According to the BBC, clean-up and road repairs due to bonfire damage "costs thousands of pounds every year".

[20] Although there are laws that could regulate dangerous bonfires, authorities are wary of enforcing them due to the threat of loyalist violence.

It is a pyramid-shaped metal cage filled with willow wood-chips, and set on a base of sand to protect the ground underneath.

By agreeing to use the beacons, the communities qualify for up to £1,500 of funding from Belfast City Council to hold a street party – as long as they do not fly paramilitary flags or burn tyres.