Woolaston News Winter 2022 online (1)

Woolaston at the time of the
Queen Elizabeth’s Accension to the Throne
Memories of David Harris - Woolaston Resident
When the Queen came to the throne in
1952, I was a pupil at Woolaston School.
I don’t recall much of it but I distinctly
remember the Coronation. The head master
had a television, probably the only one in
Woolaston, and he had all the school into his
living room to watch the proceedings. The
television was very small, only a nine inch
screen. We saw tiny images of the royal coach
and the crown being placed on the Queen’s
head. It was the first time that most of us had
seen a television and we were very impressed.
At the time the school was small, only
three classes each probably had less than
twenty children. We walked to school
unaccompanied, there was little traffic and
we all knew each other. The downside was
that if you were up to no good, your mother
knew about it before you got home. There was
nowhere to hide!
One of the reasons that there were so few
televisions in the village at the time wasn’t
just due to cost. Netherend was the only
part of the village with mains electricity.
A small number of houses had their own
generating plants. One, at Rosemount,
used the electricity to charge people’s
accumulators, which was a large glass
battery that powered the wireless sets.
Electricity was not the only thing we didn’t
have. Most houses did not have a plumbed
water supply. We had to collect water from
a stand pipe on the road side. These were
cast iron and fed by a spring and reservoir
in the Common wood. The stand pipes
were removed when the water supply was
upgraded in the 1960s. Only one of these
remains now - outside Lambrook House.
Without water there was no bathroom and
the toilet was a bucket with a wooden seat
in the orchard. We cooked on a coal fired
range or used a paraffin fuelled Primus
stove. Water was heated by a coal fird
“copper” or in a bucket on the Primus. Our
living conditions were closer to the 19th
century than the 20th !
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