Strange CH connection with Coronation

[Katharine]

Last night I watched the programme on the tailors preparing for the Coronation, far more interested in the tailoring of the uniforms than anything else. All the special metal buttons are made by a very old company called Firmin & Sons. The name was ringing bells in my head, then I remembered that my Maths prizes at Hertford were called the Thomas Firmin Prize, so I looked him up and it is his company! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Firmin He was a governor of the school in the seventeenth century, but it doesn’t say why the Maths Prize was named after him!

I wonder if the company make the Housey buttons, I feel they should!

I don’t think the prize names lived on after the Merger

[rockfreak]

Does anyone else have an actual memory of the 1953 coronation? I was in the old Prep B at the time. We were given a few days holiday. I remember my dad picking me up from Victoria station the day before the ceremony and walking back along the Mall where people were already camping out.
We'd been invited into our neighbours in north London who had a telly. It was black and white in those days of course but our neighbours had decided to vamp this up a bit by buying some kind of smoked-glass transparent screen that you could put in front of the telly which was supposed to give the impression of colour. The top third was blue (for sake of argument), the middle third beige, and the lower third green. All this actually did was to give the impression that the soldiers' upper bodies were blue, their lower bodies beige, and their horses green. A bit of a poor apology for the German expressionist painter Franz Marc who at least had his horses in vigorous primaries.
My mother loved the whole rigmarole. She'd started off life as a Catholic and loved ceremony and rigmarole as a result. I struggled to understand what the hell much of it was about. We still had the remains of an empire back then so all sorts of exotic tribal chiefs and heads of state came riding by. One such was Queen Saloti of Tonga (I've probably spelt her wrongly) who was very large, rode in an open landau and waved enthusiastically to the crowds who waved enthusiastically back. Also in the landau was an equally tiny little chap who seemed completely overwhelmed by the whole experience. The story goes that Noel Coward and his friends were watching on television and one of his friends asked: "Who is that little chap?" Coward replied: "Her lunch".

[Katharine]

Strange, I don’t remember my brother coming home for it! As a five year old I was more interested in my new hair slides, which I was convinced had real diamonds in them, they were so sparkly! So, no real memories of the main event!

[sejintenej]

I remember it all too well. We had had previous contact both with Queen Elizabeth their mother in 1943 and with the two princesses before the marriage in 1948.
I was sent to stay with my godmother who was close to the then princesses but was not included in the Westminster festivities. I am not sure about this but I think we were guests of her C of E priest to watch on a grainy black and white TV. (It might have been her TV) No explanation of what it was all about - Miss Vidal was naming just about everyone in sight but not understanding anything I suspect I was bored stiff.
Next day after matins I was presented with an engraving of a scholar of Christs Hospital engraved by J. Agar, published by . by R. Ackermann, in 1816
Miss Vidal, after having looked after the two princesses was subsequently at the weddings of several of the close family and when she was ill in hospital the family record says the HM arranged for her room to be filled with flowers.