All fired up to maintain a Wick New Year tradition
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WHEN New Year revellers gather around the roaring flames of the Bignold Park bonfire four nights from now, they will be keeping up a tradition that has been celebrated by communities across Scotland and far beyond since ancient times.
The atmosphere will be convivial as friends and acquaintances wish each other well and perhaps share a drink in front of the warming glow. In doing so, they will be taking part in a custom that is loaded with deep meaning.
“Bonfires and fire festivals go back to pagan times, the times of the Celts and Vikings,” says Mervyn Hill, who will, as usual, be setting up and supervising the bonfire along with a band of willing helpers.
“There are a lot of different festivals around Scotland. Burghead has one, Stonehaven has one, there’s a bonfire in Biggar, and in Shetland they have the Viking festival in January. In Wick they’ve been doing bonfires as long as people can remember.
“They believed that lighting a bonfire at the end of the year would burn away the spirits of that year and see in the new one. They believed that the light of a bonfire would attract the sun to come back.”
Mervyn (55), who runs Wick’s Nethercliffe Hotel along with his wife Helen, is well versed in the history of the Pulteneytown bonfire and has followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law Iain Sutherland as organiser in chief.
He points out that in the 1800s Pulteney Distillery workers used to burn whisky barrels at New Year and fishermen would set herring barrels ablaze. The bonfire now held in the Bignold Park had its origins in Shilling Hill, behind the distillery. Other locations have included an area known as Fishermen’s Park, at Roxburgh Road, and a site called Steppy Park on the high ground where Kennedy Terrace and Cairndhuna Terrace were built.
Bignold Park has been the venue throughout the post-war period apart from a couple of years in the 1970s when it was held at the South Head, where the Grizzly Park is now.
After a break when the town council stopped building the bonfire, Iain intervened to give it a new lease of life. “He used to go to the bonfire as a child and he decided that he would just do it himself,” Mervyn explains. “He and his family started the bonfire again – they resurrected it.”
In due course Mervyn took over. “It’s only about three years ago that Iain stopped physically building it, but he still comes to make sure we do it right. He sort of oversees things, and he has planted the seed in my head to keep it going."
From October onwards Mervyn and his team begin gathering materials for the fire – from waste paper and cardboard to wooden pallets – and store them safely until the time comes to build the fire on Hogmanay morning.
Mervyn, who stood down from the fire and rescue service in Wick recently after more than 35 years, keeps a watchful eye on proceedings while the fire is burning and also takes great care to ensure the site is cleared properly afterwards. The fire is always constructed on a slightly different spot each year to allow the grass time to recover.
You get families, you get kids, you get a lot of older folk. You get stories going back years from people having a blether.
“In all the years I’ve been going we’ve never had to cancel it. Snow and rain doesn’t affect us at all, but if it was a really, really windy night we would probably have to delay lighting it until things calmed down.
“Once it’s lit we get a good crowd at it. The last few years we get maybe 200 or 300 people coming to it. A lot of people come to the bonfire just to say hello, wish you a Happy New Year, and they go on to their own parties or wherever they’re travelling on to.
"I usually stay at it until the bitter end until the last person leaves.
"It’s the same people who give us a hand. They give up their time on Hogmanay morning to come and do it.
“The atmosphere is really good. You get families, you get kids, you get a lot of older folk. You get stories going back years from people having a blether.
"It’s more than a Scottish tradition because other countries have their fire festivals as well.
“I’ve got it in me now and I’ve told Iain that I’ll keep it going. That’s my Hogmanay every year. I’m committed."
- Listen to Mervyn talking about the Bignold Park bonfire on Wick Voices, the Wick Society's online oral history project.
