BY THE time Queen Elizabeth was crowned in 1953, the wirelesses that had been the talk of her father’s ceremony were old hat. The start of the Elizabethan age was the dawn of the days of television, and everyone huddled round a screen no bigger than 14 inches to watch flickering black and white pictures beamed live from Westminster Abbey into their homes or village halls.
They needed, though, to be indoors because it was wet.
Blooming wet.
The Echo said that June 2, 1953, experienced the worst early June weather for 25 years. It rained throughout the day and the temperature never climbed above nine degrees – seven degrees below the seasonal average. At Middleton St George aerodrome, gusts were regularly recorded at 40mph, with some touching 50mph.
Not good weather for bunting.
The Queen waves from the Buckingham Palace balcony at the end of her Coronation Day
“The roads winding through the dales, and across the moors, were almost deserted, and the flags hung in bedraggled folds from the windows and chimney stacks,” said the Echo’s reporter in Teesdale, “but behind the scenes, in the isolated farms and the demure front parlours of village streets, the festivities were going on merrily.
“At Forest in Teesdale, the bus, The Teesdale Queen, splashed through the rain like a modern ark.”
The Echo's front page on the day after the 1953 coronation
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The paper’s reporter in the coalfield said: “In good times and in bad the miners of Durham have loyally celebrated coronations in their own traditional way, but yesterday in the villages around Durham their celebrations had a new gaiety which disregarded the weather, which could not have been worse.
“Most of the celebrations were more of a private nature because of the weather outside. Events were curtailed, although the scope of the programmes which had been arranged reflected that times are now good for most people in colliery villages.”
And so people stayed indoors to see what this new telly thing had to offer.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill had informed Elizabeth on July 10, 1952, that her advisors were unanimous in their wish to keep TV cameras out of the abbey – the heat from the lights would exhaust her, they said, and they did not believe it appropriate that millions of ordinary people should watch such a solemn, regal occasion while drinking tea in their front rooms.
Elizabeth courteously reminded him that it was she who was being crowned and that she felt her new subjects should have the chance to see the ceremony.
She won the day.
The bunting and decorations go up ahead of the 1953 coronation in Forster Street, near North Lodge Park, in Darlington. Picture courtesy of Darlington Centre for Local Studies
There were only about 350,000 television sets spread among Britain’s 50 million population at the time, and three temporary transmitters, including one in Newcastle, had to be built so that the whole nation could pick up the flickery black-and-white images.
In the more affluent areas, people gathered in the big houses to watch their wealthier neighbours’ sets – in Spennithorne, near Leyburn, for instance, there were two sets in private halls which the whole village was watching.
In Redcar, local firemen raised money to buy a set to go in the Stead Hospital so patients could follow the service, and in Darlington Memorial Hospital, patients had a choice of four sets.
Durham Urban Council seems to have rented scores of sets for the day which it installed in colliery village halls, while in Spennymoor, there were nine sets in various halls and houses.
Most people were impressed with what the saw.
“The hours passed surprisingly swiftly for TV viewers,” said the Spectator column in the Echo’s sister paper, the Darlington & Stockton Times. “Taking their seats at 10am, they were quickly absorbed in the panorama presented, and when the brief mid-day interval arrived, the buffets, provided by kindly hosts, were at hand. The scenes and incidents of the afternoon procession were captivating, so much so that the viewers were surprised to find at 5pm they had been occupied for approximately seven hours.”
Those buffets may well have contained Coronation Chicken, the slightly spicy dish of chicken and curry powder which had first tickled the nation’s tastebuds as Jubilee Chicken in 1935, although the paper’s reports suggest cold ham and tongue were the cold dishes that everyone was eating.
The Echo had a correspondent in Westminster Abbey who took his seat at 5am and didn’t get out until gone 3pm.
“For ten hours, I existed on barley sugar with never a cigarette, yet the coronation was not only among the happiest experiences of my life but one that, minute by minute, excelled itself,” he said.
It was raining in London, too, which made an unlikely star of Sālote Tupou III, the Queen of Tonga, making her only visit to Europe from Polynesia.
“Alone among all the colonial rulers,” said the Echo, “she insisted on riding with her carriage hood down. Undaunted by the heavy rain and as wet as the waiting crowds, she laughed and waved in response to the applause.”
The Echo’s man in the abbey noted the TV cameramen at work.
“Hidden away in the 12th Century tomb on the north side of the sanctuary were shadowy figures moving behind temporary screens of plate glass, like ghosts among the tombs, faintly visible to only a few hundred in the vast congregation of nearly 8,000,” he wrote. “They were not ghosts: they were very much of the 20th Century: they were there BBC cameraman working the television cameras and bringing the glamour of the pageantry into the homes of the Queen’s subjects.”
The Echo’s editorial noted approvingly that, despite Churchill’s misgivings, this technological miracle brought the coronation to the masses.
“It was fitting that a service and a ceremony in which eminence and power were pledged to duty and to service should be shared by the people to whom the service will be given. Millions who have never previously known, except by hearsay, of the splendours of the ceremony that marks the bestowal and acceptance of the responsibilities of monarchy shared an event which, in past generations, have been the signal fortune and the privilege of the few.”
The rescheduled 1953 coronation procession took place days after the coronation in dry weather at Crook
It was fortunate that the TV gave the Echo’s journalists something to write about because the rain forced practically every outdoor event to be cancelled.
“In rain-swept Wensleydale, most of the people spent the morning of Coronation Day listening to the radio or watching TV, either at home, in schoolrooms or hotels,” it said.
Whenever anyone ventured out into the rain, they were showered with souvenirs: beakers, spoons and biscuit tins cascaded down on those who attended events, many of which were rescheduled for the following, drier, weekend.
On the day itself, the most generous place seems to have been Crakehall, near Bedale, where children were given a medal, a hanky and a new sixpence coin and the over 65s received a tea caddy containing ½lb tea.
In fact, North Yorkshire excelled itself in curious coronation antics. In Northallerton, where “steady rain throughout most of the day could not dampen the enthusiasm of the people”, three leading, Mackintoshed members of the council released three homing pigeons which took messages of good will to East Retford in Nottinghamshire where the mayor reciprocated by sending three birds back. One of the Northallerton fanciers was Alistair Carter who, as regular Memories readers will know, went on to pioneer the electric car.
READ MORE: ALISTAIR CARTER, THE ELECTRIC CAR PIONEER
Among the bravest people were those in Thoralby, a village near Leyburn with a population today of 145, where a tea went ahead for 200 people who consumed two hams, four tongues and 28lb of beef. “The ancient game of wallops was played on the Thoralby high road,” said the Darlington & Stockton Times. “Adults taught children how to throw the sticks. Some missed the ninepins entirely but four-year-old Kenneth Bell, wearing red Indian dress, knocked down four pins at one throw.
“Other events included a lady’s ankle competition, a ‘grinning through the horse collar’ competition, and a bread and treacle race.”
Wallops sounds good fun, and one can easily lose hours of one’s time gurning through a horse collar. But a lady’s ankle competition would not be allowed these days – women usually had to stand on a stage with the curtain lowered so only their ankles showed for the male arbitrators to fondle and rank.
A Coronation tractor in Grange Avenue, Hurworth Place. Sitting in front is Stan Richardson, with Robert Hodgson behind and Tom Wearmouth on the right
The most eagerly anticipated coronation event, though, was due to be held in Stokesley, which the Sunday Pictorial newspaper (later called the Sunday Mirror) previewed with a poem:
The men who live up Stokesley way
Are on their guard; in fact they say
They’re dodging Coronation Day
And won’t be seen around.
They know too well, if they get tight
With rolling pins to left and right
They’ll all end Coronation Night
Like Royalty, well “crowned”!
We are grateful to the volunteers at The Globe Community Library in Stokesley for sending in cuttings which tell of the planned “Throwing the Rolling Pin” competition. It was to be held during the Coronation Day sports just after a tug-of-war competition in which the two sides were to be stationed on either side of the River Leven so the losers were guaranteed a ducking.
The Rolling Pin Competition was for women only and, said the Yorkshire Post, “a live target will not be used”.
The organising committee decreed that the competing women would throw a pin provided for them rather than be allowed to bring along their own kitchen utensils.
“One of the reasons for this decision is that rolling pins are not now very widely used and some contestants may not be able to produce their own missiles,” said the Yorkshire Post’s reporter. “This may be owing to a decline in home baking, but I prefer to think that it is attributable to the improvement in husbands’ behaviour.”
Sadly, neither the Echo nor the D&S Times reported on how Stokesley’s imaginative events went on. Perhaps, because of the weather, they were called off – there are too many inherent health and safety risks associated with throwing the rolling pin for it to be considered suitable for an indoor venue.
The fancy dress parade at Sedgefield survived the weather, although one entrant completed her outfit with a very large umbrella
After a day of postponements, just as the evening bonfires and fireworks were being abandoned as damp squibs, there came a break in the clouds.
“Like twin balls of fire hanging in the sky, one on each side of Darlington, the beacons at Cleasby and Houghton Bank last night were the bright spots that made up for a dull day,” said the Echo’s main report. “Rain had fallen almost continuously throughout the day causing most outdoor events to be cancelled or postponed. The rain stopped almost promptly at 10.30 when the beacons were lit.
“The haze left by the rain made each beacon appear like a red sunset.
“They were part of a chain of 1,400 all over the country touched off at the same time as the Chief Scout lit one in Hyde Park, London.”
The Echo’s coalfield correspondent was convinced that in Durham, at least, Britain’s last coronation had been a success.
He concluded: “When all the coronation decorations are down and people have forgotten just what did win that prize for the best decorated house, the miners and their families will still think of June 2, 1953, as a day to be remembered – in spite of that cursed rain.”
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Youngsters at Coundon Station prepare in good weather for their coronation sports in 1953
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