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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Shanti Das

High emotion amid coronation cake and cutouts in Britain’s most royalist spot

Alan and Sheila Bridges with a coronation cake.
Alan and Sheila Bridges were holding a celebration for about 40 neighbours outside their home in Benfleet, Essex. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

Sheila Bridges had been up since 6am. She’d spent the morning preparing food – coronation chicken curry, coronation quiche, pizza – for the 40 or so neighbours who’d soon be filing into the huge union jack-draped gazebo outside her house.

It felt like a last-minute rush, but the residents of Adelaide Gardens had been planning their party for weeks, from sourcing a lifesize cardboard cutout of Charles to organising a pin-the-diamond-on-the-crown competition and ordering a purple cake big enough to feed the whole street.

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