County mourns
“The expressions on the faces in the streets provided ample evidence of the sense of personal loss.”
So reported our sister paper the Kentish Gazette after the news was first announced on radio, on February 6, 1952, that King George VI had died.
Canterbury Cathedral’s Bell Harry, used only for the passing away of kings and archbishops, now tolled mournfully every minute.
Enter the Second Elizabethan era where a young married mother-of-two, aged 25, suddenly had the bewildering and Herculean responsibility of becoming Queen of Great Britain and its Empire and Commonwealth.
But the country that she took over in 1952 was a gloomy place.
Britain was still suffering from the Second World War, with people having meagre meals through rationing and bomb-sites still pockmarked the country.
Pollution from industry, vehicle emissions and even home heating choked towns and cities, peaking most disastrously in 1952 with The Great Smog of London, in which thousands died.
The loss of the King was felt as another personal blow to the British people.
George VI had been popular, bringing back public esteem in the Royal Family after the upheaval over the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, in 1936.
Respect for him soared during the Second World War when he became a role model, remaining stoic and sharing hardships.
He wouldn’t move out of Buckingham Palace despite it being bombed during the Blitz. He was almost killed when a bomb exploded in a courtyard.
George VI’s younger brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed on active service.
The King and Queen during the war also accepted food rationing, like the rest of the population.
During this time they also provided morale-boosting visits throughout the United Kingdom, visiting bomb sites, munitions factories and troops.
George VI, who was just 56, had suffered conditions such as cancer and circulation problems and he finally died of a coronary thrombosis, a clot in a heart blood vessel that can cause a heart attack.
As the King’s health declined during 1951, Elizabeth frequently stood in for him at public events.
When she toured Canada and visited President Harry S. Truman in the United States, in October 1951, her private secretary carried a draft accession declaration in case the King died while she was away.
It was during a stopover at Kenya, for a tour of Australia and New Zealand, that Elizabeth learned of her father’s death.
The first major tragedy she saw in Britain during her reign was the Great Smog of London, which killed 4,000 people in December 1952.
It is thought to be the worst air pollution incident in the history of the United Kingdom.
Above all the source of this was the heavy use of coal at the time for domestic heating but also in power stations, and some coming from the Kent collieries of Betteshanger, Chislet, Snowdown and Tilmanstone.
Added to this were fumes from cars, steam trains and diesel-fuelled buses, which had replaced the capital’s ecofriendly electric trams just five months earlier.
Other industrial and commercial sources added to the toxic air but the final straw that month was people stoking up their coal fires during a cold snap and wind conditions that led to the massing of airborne pollutants.
All this caused the thick smoke to hang over the capital, reducing visibility to a metre at worst.
Government medical reports in the following weeks estimated that up to 4,000 people had died and 100,000 more were taken ill.
The Queen had begun to visit Kent in her first years, for example to Folkestone and Dover with the Duke of Edinburgh in April 1958.
But one of the first arrivals by a major Royal in the new era was her sister Princess Margaret in Folkestone in July 1952.
Monica Ellenden, three, a patient at the town’s Royal Victoria Hospital was one of the delighted youngsters who met her.
This was when the Princess toured the children’s ward, medical and surgical wards and a new wing built to replace one destroyed by German shellfire during the war.
She also visited the town’s Bruce Porter Home for invalid children, where she unveiled a plaque beside a lift donated to the home by the people of Folkestone and Hythe.
Princess Margaret rounded off her trip with tea at the Leas Cliff Hall.
The coronation of Elizabeth II took place on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey in London.
It was held more than a year after she became Queen to allow time to pass after George VI died and to give the chance to plan the massive event.
To this day it is the only British coronation to have been fully televised; until this point the cameras had not been allowed inside the abbey during her parents’ crowning in 1937.
Millions across Britain watched the ceremony live on the BBC Television Service and many bought or rented TV sets for the first time, so they were able to tune in for the momentous event.