AS Harwich gears up for the 160th birthday of the Guy Carnival the Standard takes a look back at the history of the annual procession.

The parade, which takes place in October, is unique to the town and sees revellers in fancy dress and huge, papier-mache “big heads” join floats as they wind through the streets.

The Guy Carnival started life as the Shipwrights’ Carnival in 1854.

Back then Victorian dockyard workers held a yearly torch-lit procession and grabbed the chance to mock their bosses with poems and slogans painted on sandwich boards.

The tradition still lives on today with cryptic messages, known as pithy pars, about family and friends contained in the official carnival programme.

Harwich and Dovercourt Rotary chairman John Wade said: “The carnival is unique and goes back to the 1600s when the apprentices from Navyard Wharf used to ‘guy’ around with their model ships.

“It has an illustrious history and was rekindled in 1953 after the floods by the Roundtable and then the Rotary took it over.”