Members of the Bishop Beveridge Club brought mementos of the 1950s to a meeting to share their coronation memories. Ginny Willcocks made rock cakes and brought along (with great effort!) a television from that era … not the paper-slim, light-weight TVs of today.

Ginny reminded us that the Coronation was the first outside broadcast of the BBC and that led to fond memories of TV programmes for children of the 50s and 60s – programmes like Watch with Mother (Andy Pandy, The Wooden Tops, and Bill and Ben) and particularly Muffin the Mule who danced on the piano top!

People remembered going to neighbours’ houses to gather round the television (we never called it ‘TV’ in those days) to watch the Queen’s Coronation as a community event … not many people had their own televisions in those days.