What were you doing when the Princess Elizabeth became Queen.

henetha

I know South Brent quite well, WW2, and lived there for a while in the early 90's. It's fascinating to find old newspapers and read all the old news. I think the Western Morning News is still going strong, not sure, I must google it.
Mum and I used to get a bus from Torquay to Plymouth quite often while I was growing up, as she had become friendly with the solicitor who had organised my adoption. He lived at Turnchapel and I can remember the 'flying boats' landing on Plymouth Sound and taxi-ing over to RAF Mountbatten.
I was very often travel sick on the bus, usual by the time it stopped at South Brent! So many memories of those days.
How amazing to run a youth club from your loft!

? it wasn’t from our loft, but a building next to The London Inn on the Plymouth road, which we named The Loft. I think it’s been turned into housing now.

I don’t remember anything about the death of the King and the Queen’s accession, but I recall lots about the Coronation and the preparations for it. I expect there will be a thread about that in June.

X post, tanith

The Coronation was the year after, 1953.

Yes, I think it was Sopers, it was about 50 years ago Whitewave. The car was a silvery blue and lovely to drive!

I do remember the Coronation the following year, my Mum made me a beautiful yellow and blue party dress and I was Princess Anne and my friend was Prince Charles at the Coronation street party we were in pride of place seat wise.

I was 6, don't remember anything about her accession, probably because the family just ignored it. I do remember the coronation. We had a new teleision so all the family came round to watch it. 12-15 people crammed into a little living room trying to see a tiny screen. I was given a Coronation ball. When I got fed up I went and sat in the back porch and played with it.

My mun always said we got the TV specially so we could watch the coronation. My dad said it was to watch Stanley Matthews in the Cup Final.

I was three at the time and can remember the trestle tables outside our front door laden with sandwiches and fairy cakes & jelly.
My dad was poorly in bed with mumps and I remember my mum sending me upstairs to feed him a jelly I gave him mine as well as it was all he could eat at the time.

Callistemon21

^South Brent^

I bought a very nice Ford Cortina from a garage in South Brent many years ago

Oh was that Sopers?

I know South Brent quite well, WW2, and lived there for a while in the early 90's. It's fascinating to find old newspapers and read all the old news. I think the Western Morning News is still going strong, not sure, I must google it.
Mum and I used to get a bus from Torquay to Plymouth quite often while I was growing up, as she had become friendly with the solicitor who had organised my adoption. He lived at Turnchapel and I can remember the 'flying boats' landing on Plymouth Sound and taxi-ing over to RAF Mountbatten.
I was very often travel sick on the bus, usual by the time it stopped at South Brent! So many memories of those days.
How amazing to run a youth club from your loft!

South Brent

I bought a very nice Ford Cortina from a garage in South Brent many years ago

I was only a few months old parked in a cot in the corner of the room while my parents and neighbours watched the coronation on our TV. We were one of only a handful of people to have a TV in our village. Now I feel old as well.

I was in secondary school. We were all summoned into the assembly hall and filed in by classes. The staff looked very grave. The headmistress gave us the news and some girls went into floods of tears - not me, I had never met the king and had no personal affection for him to upset me, unlike when my grandfather had died almost exactly two years earlier (also of cancer)

She added that in view of the news there would be hot gravy added to the school dinner that day. Spam and salad with hot gravy made a very odd meal and is one of my main memories of the day.

Blossoming

I wasn’t even a twinkle in my dad’s eye.

Love that expression Blossoming!

I don't actually remember it, but we were living in London at the time. Apparently, I sat on my Dad's shoulders to watch the procession and tinkled down his neck!

What a lovely thread. I wasn't thought about at that time as my Mum was 10. I'm going in to tend to her today and it will be a lovely thing to discuss as she might have memories of it even though she forgets things within 30 seconds these days.

I was 11 and sitting in our classroom when the King's death was announced. That hammer-blow, at that time, transcended the fact of Princess Elizabeth's accession. The pictures in the papers the next day of the new Queen descending from the aircraft to be greeted by Winston Churchill were what really brought home the fact that we had a Queen.

henetha

I feel VERY old .
I was born in Plymouth in 1937 but was adopted and taken to Torquay in 1941. My earliest memories are of bombs and fires and explosions in Plymouth.

My grandmother and her youngest daughter were evacuated to South Brent - a village at the southern end of Dartmoor . They lived in a loft, above a garage on what was then the main Exeter - Plymouth road.

We moved to South Brent in our early marriage, and began a youth club from the loft .
When renovating it we found a newspaper Western Morning News which must have been read by my grandmother.

I feel VERY old .
I was born in Plymouth in 1937 but was adopted and taken to Torquay in 1941. My earliest memories are of bombs and fires and explosions in Plymouth.

I was 4yrs at the time, so vague memories. There was a Coronation party on the green outside the London flats I lived in, the neighbourhood joined together, long trestle tables, jelly, fish paste sandwiches and paper hats, real posh! Children (including me) were given a Coronation teaspoon which came in a decorated box (wish I knew where that was now).

I was 11, nearly 12. I was crossing over the little road from the main school playground to Middle School when a girl I knew came from the opposite direction, in floods of tears. She told me the king was dead. I was terribly shocked. He had always been there, and I had heard nothing to make me think he would die. It was a while before it dawned on me that Princess Elizabeth was now Queen. “God save the Queen” was about Queen Victoria, wasn’t it?

I remember it clearly as I was 14. I was at school in
Torquay having an English lesson when the headmistress walked in and said something very quietly to our teacher. He then asked us to stand up and informed us that the King had died. Some of us cried, including me. Later the whole school gathered in our assembly hall and the headmistress told us that Princess Elizabeth would now be our Queen. We were then allowed to go home early. Mum and I listened to it on the radio and cried together.

Whitewavemark2

Now I feel old?

Me too ?

I was six and at an infant school a little walk a short distance away and was put in charge of little friend Susan, who lived next door but one; she was five.
I remember pictures in the papers of the new Queen arriving back home from Kenya.

We lived with my maternal grandparents - housing short due to Plymouth being targeted during the war.
My FIL apparently got leave in the war, got to the top of Haldon Hill and could see a glow - it was Plymouth on fire after the bombing.

Now I feel old?