IT was the day when, according to the Daily Mail, “little Lady Newton” met the Queen.
On May 27, 1960, the “first lady of Newton Aycliffe”, Carolyn Corner, 11, presented a posy of flowers to Her Majesty on her first visit to the new town (below).
“I can’t remember a lot about it, there was too much going on,” she says 62 years later. “The only things that stay with me are that the Queen had a yellow coat on and her skin was beautiful, flawless – like porcelain. Even as an 11-year-old I noticed that.”
Carolyn was chosen for the honour as when she was born on April 29, 1949, she became the “first Newtonian” – the first baby whose parents were living in the new town.
Her parents were Kenneth and Lorna Corner and they had moved into No 17, Clarence Green on November 12, 1948, which was three days after Lord William Beveridge, the chairman of the Aycliffe Development Corporation, had handed over the keys to the first residents of the new town, Don and Eve Perry, at No 9.
The Corners had chosen to settle at Aycliffe because Ken, a welder who had made bailey bridges in Newcastle during the war, had got a job at RW Toothills furniture company, which was one of Aycliffe’s first businesses. Reginald Toothill had set it up to re-upholster people’s furniture – after the war, there was a shortage of timber so items had to be recycled rather than new furniture made. Ken joined the business because Toothill’s was trying to avoid the timber shortage by building metal tubular furniture, and he designed the company’s removable covers – first they were attached with spring clips and then, in a revolutionary step, with zips.
Carolyn in her pram amid the prefabs of Clarence Green
Carolyn was born in Bishop Auckland General Hospital and was brought back to the prefabs of Clarence Green as her first home.
The prefabs of Clarence Green, Newton Aycliffe, were Carolyn's first home
Carolyn, right, and Cheryl Bell on the five-year-olds' first day at Sugar Hill school in 1954
Her first baby status made her a local celebrity. Several newspapers, including The Northern Echo, followed her on her first day at the “ultra-modern Sugar Hill school” when she was five in 1954.
Consequently, when it was learned that the Queen was coming, Carolyn was the first choice as the first baby to present the first posy.
A rare colour picture of Carolyn in the powder blue dress in which she met the Queen
Her parents took her to Fenwick’s store in Newcastle to choose a powder blue dress and she attended Mrs N Capp’s Dancing Academy in the new town to learn how to curtsy.
Carolyn, centre, in her royal dress with her friends Patricia Perry and Susan Smith just before she met the Queen
“As the day approached, I remember I was bombarded with people coming to take my photograph,” she says, looking at her photo-album. “I remember for this one I was taken out of school to have my picture taken.”
In its preview of the big day, the Daily Mail noted that “blonde Carolyn has long ‘Alice in Wonderland’ hair”.
The Daily Mail report of Carolyn's preparations to meet the Queen
The Queen would not have recognised her from such a description.
“On the advice of the Perrys, I had it all cut off and had it permed at Binns in Darlington,” she says. “In those days, you had the perm put on one week and then you went back the next week to have it completed.”
A perm, of course, is a permanent wave – a chemicals and heat technique designed to give straight hair a curl.
“It was horrendous,” says Carolyn from beneath her straight fringe. “My hair was all thick and wiry, and I vowed then that I would never have another perm.”
Her Majesty had a very busy day in County Durham on May 27, 1960. She started in Peterlee, lunched in Durham castle and then drove down to Aycliffe where she met Carolyn in a marquee off Stephenson Way.
“I had to go up when I got the nod and give her the bouquet,” says Carolyn. It passed off without a hitch, and although Carolyn noticed the quality of the Queen’s skin, the monarch was kind enough not to make a comment about Carolyn’s perm.
Her Majesty then opened the RAFA club, looked in at the council offices, inspected the Simpasture playing field, visited Aycliffe Secondary Modern School before finally calling in on the Llewellyn family at 13 Barrington Way, where she took three small bites out of a fairy cake.
There was so much interest in the royal visit that lurid stories appeared in the press about how the Llewellyns’ house had received a complete makeover beforehand and the Corners had been treated to an expensive wardrobe.
In her album, Carolyn has a little piece cut from a newspaper that sets out to quash the “ugly rumours”. “Carolyn Corner’s dress was not paid for by the corporation, and the corporation did not arrange for a firm to furnish the Llewellyns’ house and have the furniture removed afterwards”.
The article says: “Mr and Mrs Llewellyn already have a very nice home and it certainly never occurred to Mr and Mrs Corner to do otherwise than provide Carolyn’s dress themselves.”
After the hubbub of the day was over, Carolyn had to knuckle down to her schoolwork. She had passed the 11-plus and went to Spennymoor Grammar Technical School, which meant a coach from Aycliffe to a bus-stop at Ferryhill where she waited for 45 minutes for a service bus into Spennymoor.
After school, she became a Personal Assistant at Darlington Memorial Hospital, and her father, by now design director at Toothill’s, moved to Carlbury Court which was in the converted stable block of Carlbury Hall near Piercebridge – Reg Toothill lived in the main hall.
Her celebrity status followed her, as when she got wed from there in 1970, local newspapers retold her story beneath the headline “Newton Aycliffe’s first baby marries”.
Carolyn Hardy, formerly Corner: Newton Aycliffe's first baby
Since then, she has quietly got on with her life, raising a son, and working as a PA in the police and the meat hygiene service, and now living in High Coniscliffe. The picture of her in the pram as Newton Aycliffe’s first baby has appeared a couple of times over the years in Memories, and we've long wondered what became of her. At a recent Memories talk in St Edwin’s Church in High Coniscliffe she plucked up courage and introduced herself, and it was to meet “the first lady of the new town” and learn of the day that she met the first lady of the nation.
TOOTHILL’S was not only one of Aycliffe’s first businesses established after the war when the munitions factory closed, but one of its biggest. At its peak, Toothill’s employed more than 200 people building furniture. In 1987, the Toothill family sold it a Swedish company, Adamas, for £4.7m but it slipped into insolvency in March 1991 with debts of £3.2m.
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