[Marks and Spencer cushion currently on sale]
More 1953 coronation memories coming up. This time from Diane Shearn:
“I would have been 9 years old & I lived with my family of seven including my grandparents
How I remember the excitement leading up to the coronation, in particular. the morning before the big event , when a van drew up onto our neighbours’ drive.
He came out of his van with an enormous contraption which, having climbed onto the roof, he placed on the chimney.
Was he perchance practising to climb Mount Everest ?
I asked my Granny about it & she said that he was putting up a television aerial.
What’s a television? I asked.
Well it’s a bit like going to the pictures but you can watch it from home! she said.
Until then I had only ever seen Bambi, Cinderella & other Disney films, so how exciting.
All the members of my family gathered around the radio to listen to the Coronation, but, I was going to do better than that!
I took my dolly & a cheese sandwich, to the front garden, where I sat on the wall, & looked up to Mrs Grey’s chimney pot.
I must have been sitting there for hours, & in all of that time, not one member of my family came to look for me.
No one seemed to worry about me, & this being at the time of a child murderer on the prowl
After such a long time, I was so tired of waiting for this television thing to start , that I realised it clearly was time to go indoors realising that this new fangled thing was never going to catch on
I was tired & disappointed, but I still had the excitement of the main event, walking to the chapel at the end of the road to collect my Coronation mug & tin with a bar of Cadburys chocolate, both of which I still have.
Sadly. as with Her Majesty, my dolly is no longer with us, but the memories remain.”
Thanks Diane. I also mentioned the fact that the first King of all England was crowned in Bath in 973 AD and a plaque to that effect will shortly be back on the east wall of Bath Abbey.
Angela Calvert-Jones writes:
In response to your recent article/request I thought you might be interested in the following.
I understand that the two attached images relating to the crowning of King Edgar in 973 and the visit of Queen Elizabeth I to Bath in 1590 were preliminary pictures for the 1909 Bath Pageant. I realise that only King Edgar applies to your request.
I believe that the pictures may have hung for some years in what was Fortts in Milsom Street, now Waterstones. I wonder if any of your readers recognise them or can provide any information.
Finally, the late Queen Elizabeth came to Bath, back in 1973, to acknowledge a thousand years of monarchy and that brought an email and a photograph from Davina Ware.
She wrote:
‘A vague link to previous anointings….My parents-in-law had this plate on display for many years. It’s now 1050 years, ha ha. No doubt many other Bathonians have these?’
