Happy birthday

THE Queen is marking her 80th birthday on Friday with a mixture of private celebrations and public commemorations.

On the day, much of the real partying will take place behind closed doors at a family dinner for close royal relatives only. It is being hosted at Kew Palace in Richmond, Surrey, by the Prince of Wales, who will deliver a televised tribute to his mother on the day.

But the Queen will go on a walkabout with the Duke of Edinburgh to greet well-wishers outside Windsor Castle.

On Saturday, she will be joined by family and friends in the evening as the celebrations continue, but this gathering is also strictly private.

Appropriately on Sunday, St George's Day, the Queen, the rest of the royals, their friends and staff from the Royal Household will fill St George's Chapel in Windsor for a special Service of Thanksgiving.

A certain city two hundred miles north has some strong connections with this anniversary. Her Majesty's father was Prince Albert, Duke of York, and her original title was Princess Elizabeth of York.

Not only that, but the man who performed this special baby's christening was Cosmo Lang, then Archbishop of York. The service was carried out in the music room of Buckingham Palace.

The Queen has seen many changes in her eight decades. For an idea as to how life has moved on, we need only walk down memory lane to York in 1926.

This was the year of the General Strike. Britain's industrial capacity had been crippled by the Great War, and the result was mass unemployment. On May Day, the miners walked out in protest at wage cuts and the dispute escalated into the General Strike two days later.

A state of emergency was called, and electricital power was cut by half. On May 4, the confectionery firms went on to a three-day week. Soon afterwards, Rowntree's, Craven's and Terry's closed completely.

Other parts of the city were also paralysed.

Builders, boilermakers, engineers and printers downed tools, but the biggest impact was made by transport workers. More than 7,000 were estimated to be on strike in York, 6,000 of whom were railway workers.

Support for the strike soon began to crumble however, and the trade unions called off the strike on May 12.

York was a very different place in 1926. The Eye of York was dominated by York Castle, an imposing prison with cell blocks which fanned out from the governor's house. It wasn't to be demolished for another nine years.

Elsewhere, however, the city was changing. The Derwent Valley Light Railway had been operating to the south-east of York since 1912. But the number of people travelling on it peaked only three years later, and the last passenger service ran in 1926.

The motor vehicle was beginning to have an impact: the York Pullman bus company was launched in the same year.

Streets which were fine for the horse and carriage were inadequate for this new species of transport. Layerthorpe Bridge was widened in the 1920s, then traffic levels increased so much the job had to be done again 70 years later. Monk Bridge, too, was widened, between 1924 and 1926.

Two major new landmarks were added to the skyline in the year of the Queen's birth. York Sugar Factory on Boroughbridge Road was built by the Second Anglo-Scottish Beet Sugar Corporation to serve the local farming community.

But the growth of the York factory was hampered in its early days by apathy from the farmers who weren't convinced that beet would be profitable.

They were wrong. In its first year, the sugar plant processed 54,000 tons of beet.

The other new factory was taking shape at Bustardthorpe. Terry's buildings were designed by JE Wade, and built between 1926 and 1930. Wade delivered on his promise to make it "handsome and uncluttered".

A fine municipal building made its debut in '26 too: York Central Library. Built on land previously used for livery stables by F Shepherd and Son, it cost £25,600.

But the most vivid memories of York 80 years ago come from those who were there. Among them was Tim Heley who, a few years ago, wrote a piece about his childhood memories of Nunnery Lane in 1926. It was a very different life to the one the future Queen would know, but no less cherished for that.

"It was never dull down The Lane as the occasional tramcar ground up or down along the route between South Bank and Rowntrees and such friendly drivers as Charlie Hunter or Bert Cockerill would give us a wave or tell us to behave ourselves, whichever was appropriate," Mr Heley wrote.

"You could buy anything from a 'Kuro' headache powder to an ice cream; a liquorice stick to a bundle of firewood from the shop of Mrs Cox. The adjacent property was not a shop, just a terraced house, but occupier Mrs Sadler had a thriving business with her fresh eggs.

"We had reached Swann Street, now (I was born at number 48 by the way) and the corner shop of Mrs Borrows, whose good quality second-hand clothes went through school with quite a few of us.

"Confectioner Mr Pannett, next door, had the first electric ice cream-making plant I ever saw and we took our wireless accumulators there for re-charging."

Whatever the Queen has for her birthday tea, it will struggle to match a threepenny pie from William Wright's which "was not just a delicacy it was the jewel in pork butcher's crown".

o This is my last Yesterday Once More. I must thank everyone who has helped me write these articles down the years, including the unfailingly helpful and expert staff at both York Reference Library and the City Archives, Hugh Murray and many more local historians, and, of course, many, many readers.

They say the past is a foreign country: without your guidance I would have been lost. Thank you.