AS A 14-year-old girl living with her parents in Broadway, Margaret Bowman remembers watching the coronation on television.

Her parents had bought a TV set especially, Mrs Bowman says – although it wasn’t the young Queen they were hoping to get a glimpse of.

Instead, they hoped to see her uncle, Colour Sergeant Archibald Watsham, of the 5th Battalion the West Yorkshire Regiment. The Second World War veteran was one of five soldiers from the TA regiment who had been asked to take part in the coronation parade in London.

Her uncle was a very smart man, Mrs Bowman says – as our photo of him in uniform confirms – and he was “terribly excited” to be taking part in the parade.

She and her parents watched the coronation from beginning to end hoping for a glimpse of him. “And I think we did get one!”

They also saw the young Queen. “She looked absolutely regal and beautiful and very, very serene,” Mrs Bowman, now 74 and living in Stamford Bridge, says. “Although I was quite young, I just felt that she would reign for a very long time.”

It was a proud moment, watching the coronation on TV, Mrs Bowman says. Her brother, Robert, could not be there – he was with the army in Korea – but she and her parents made a party of it, with bunting in the sitting room. “I found it quite awe-inspiring, watching the coronation. I enjoyed every minute of it. It was part of our history.”

• Kenneth Layfield was five years old on the day the Queen was crowned at Westminster Abbey. But he remembers it vividly, because of the street party held in Kingsway North.

He still has a photo of that day, which shows him – “I’m the little gormless one in glasses and a hood!” he jokes – his twin sister Christine and his mum, Doris, with 30 or more other children and adults in the garden of a house at the north end of the street.

“It rained to begin with, as far as I can remember,” he recalls. “That’s why I had my hood on.”

That didn’t stop them having fun. “There was cakes, sausage rolls, jelly, ice cream – all that stuff,” says Mr Layfield, now 64.

He may have been young but he knew what the party was for. “It was for the Queen. The whole street had bunting up. We were told to go out with the poles used to support washing lines and we had to stick them in the ground and people came along with bunting which was held up on the poles.”

Mr Layfield believes many of the adults may have been inside watching the coronation on TV. “There weren’t many TVs in them days. People that had them invited everybody in to watch.”

Not the children, though. They were too busy enjoying themselves outside. “It was a good day!”