Rosemary King, a retired nursery owner, cherishes the day she and three school friends, aged 17 at the time, camped out on the Mall and watched the entire procession for the Queen’s Coronation from the top of the viewing stands. “I don’t even suppose I said thank you, which I should have done – whoever he was, he was very brave and very kind,” she added. That’s why it was so kind,” Elizabeth explained.Įlizabeth said she did not mind the sailor picking her up, and she was “amazed that he managed to do it – perhaps he’d had a few pints at the Dog and Duck.” So he had to pick me up to be able to see across the crowd and up to the balcony. “Because you’re a child, you could only see backs and bottoms. When they reached a certain point in the crowd, a sailor, donned in his blues, picked up seven-year-old Elizabeth and placed her on his shoulders so that she could see the balcony of Buckingham Palace where the Queen and Prince Philip would appear. The two “elbowed” their way down the Mall, which was “this roaring mass around us.
Telegraph reader Elizabeth Howard recalled with a sense of wonder when her mother, Joan Howard, took her as a girl to watch the late Queen on her Coronation.Ī cold and wet, but memorable, day, Elizabeth wore her “best and most durable clothes”, including her school overcoat, “and probably my thick school socks and shoes – and I know I had a beret on or something, maybe my school hat.” In the evening, she “joined many of the villagers with flaming torches to walk to the top of Win Green to light the beacon as soon as the one from the Isle of Wight was seen.”
Later that day, Adrienne saw Morris dancers for the first time as part of the village festivities. After that day, friends often came in for an evening to watch the Sunday play and ‘What's My Line?’” she continued. “Thirty-five friends in the village crowded into our living room to watch. However, “for the big day, mum bought a magnifier for the 12-inch television screen,” Adrienne said. Like many others, Adrienne’s memories include a newly bought television, which her mother purchased only a year prior, “much to the horror of her friends because of the ugly aerial on top of our house!” A huge beacon of firewood was built on Win Green in preparation for beacon lighting from one end of the country to the other, starting in the Isle of Wight,” she said. “We decorated our house with flags and paper coloured streamers. “But I was not out in the street for two minutes when I got made to go to the front and lead the parade because I was dressed as the Queen!” Once all dressed up, Yvonne’s family tried to convince her to join the parade of children out in the street: “There was a man and a bunch of children there who were waiting for me to join the parade, but I did not want to go. She sewed those into the crown,” Yvonne described. They were not valuable, but they must’ve been fashion jewellery of the day. “She even put my grandmother’s jewellery around the crown to resemble the crown stones. She wore a crown of the same red velvet material as her dress, which Yvonne's mother made using cotton wool around the headband and covered the top with wire and silver paper. All down the front I had fur – I don’t know whether she knitted it or what – and I had a big white lovely collar and a satin sash, just like the Queen wore.”
Yvonne treasures the photographs to this day that her mother took of her in her costume: “I had a white satin dress on and a red velvet cloak.
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