WEEK-LONG celebrations including ox roastings, tea parties and fancy dress parades were staged by towns and villages across Berkshire as residents united to celebrate the Queen's Coronation.

The country celebrated the 60th anniversary of the occasion on Sunday, so The Chronicle commemorates this historic event with a look back at the Coronation fever which swept the county and the nation on June 2, 1953.

A special edition of the Berkshire Mercury, on Saturday, June 6, documented the wealth of celebrations following the ceremony at Westminster Abbey.

Reading was awash with events and festivities, which started on the previous Sunday morning when St Laurence's Church was filled for a civil commemorative service, attended by the mayor, Cllr F. H. Lewis and the Corporation, who attended in civic state, wearing their municipal robes.

Celebrations kicked off at Thameside Promenade with dongola races, double sculling skiff races and water polo, followed by a procession of decorated boats organised by the Upper Thames Motor

Boat Club.

Reading streets were also a riot of colour with a competition for the best decorations spurring on friendly rivalry, with Amity Road crowned the most extravagant for its homemade pennants bearing red unicorns and lions.

There was also an international element to the very British affair with the visit of a delegation from Reading, Pennsylvania, who toured the county during the week.

Though Coronation Day was free of engagements, the visitors were kept busy - visiting Huntley and Palmers, H. and G. Simonds brewery, Reading University, Windsor Castle and Eton College, as well as cruising down the river from Maidenhead to Marlow.

During a visit to the world famous biscuit factory in Reading's King's Road on the eve of the Coronation, the delegation was treated to an exhibition of biscuits and cakes in decorated tins in the

reception room.

An article in the Mercury read: "Particular praise was given to two splendidly-iced cakes which are to be sent to Toronto for this year's Canadian National Exhibition.

"Both are three-tier cakes; on the bottom tier of one is depicted the Coronation procession, and on the other Buckingham Palace surrounded by a battalion of the Guards in ceremonial dress.

"The Coronation regalia is the motif for other parts of the decoration, and each cake is surmounted by a crown."

The day also marked a new era in more ways than one, with television bringing the splendour and significance of the Coronation home to hundreds of people across Berkshire when the ceremony was broadcast to the world.

For many of the 1,200 pensioners who filled Reading Town Hall it was the first time they had watched television, with large-screen transmission of the proceedings arranged by Reading

Rotary Club. Many were surprised by the influence of television on events, but it was the distraction of captivating broadcasts, coupled with unco-operative cold weather, that resulted in dwindling numbers on the streets.

A report in the Mercury said: "In Reading the "writing on the wall" was unmistakable; TV has practically killed public celebrations on a general scale.

"Only in the Town Hall was a momentous civic attraction in being, as thrilled old folk glued their eyes to the TV screen. In homes all over the borough, too, residents were watching the Coronation scenes, cheaply, and cosily regardless of the weather."

A first hand account of the Coronation at the Abbey was brought to life by the Mercury's reporter Rosemary Meynell.

Rosemary wrote: "The overwhelming impression for those of us who were in the Abbey for the Coronation of the Queen was that we had shared as well as witnessed the ceremony. What we shared was not merely a wonderful spectacle and a considerable ordeal, it was a deep emotional experience; and, when the long hours at the Abbey were over, many of us could have said with John Donne - 'We are not just those persons which we were.'"