Tens of thousands of people packed the streets of Lewes in East Sussex on Thursday night as the town's bonfire societies staged Britain's largest and most raucous Guy Fawkes celebration. Torch-lit processions wound through the narrow high street for several hours. Since 5 November fell on a weekday rather than a Sunday, the event went ahead on the date itself, as tradition dictates.

The celebrations are organised by the town's bonfire societies, including Cliffe, Commercial Square, Lewes Borough, Southover, South Street, Waterloo and the junior Nevill society. Each runs its own procession, fire site and fireworks display. Beyond the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the night commemorates the 17 Protestant martyrs burned at the stake in Lewes between 1555 and 1557. Seventeen burning crosses were again carried through the streets in their memory.

Sussex Police and Lewes District Council had repeated their annual appeal for visitors to stay away unless they lived locally. Roads into the town centre closed from late afternoon under East Sussex County Council orders.

Southern, the rail operator, said in advance that trains would not stop at Lewes or nearby stations through the evening. Attendance has previously been estimated at up to 80,000, several times the town's population of roughly 17,000.

As is customary, the societies kept their effigies secret until they were paraded and destroyed at the fire sites. The tableaux, which organisers traditionally use to lampoon public figures, again took aim at politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

Past effigies have provoked complaints and police inquiries, and the societies have faced calls to modernise some costumes and customs. They have defended the night as a satire rooted in local history.

Sussex Police said officers would review the night's incidents and publish arrest and injury figures once the clear-up was complete. Emergency services had positioned extra ambulance crews and fire appliances around the bonfire sites. Many other towns across England held organised displays over the coming weekend, but Lewes remained the clearest example of the celebration held on the night itself.