A Leeds 90-year-old gran attended her second royal proclamation ceremony after also attending Queen Elizabeth II’s way back in 1952.
Retired teacher Freda Matthews has lived to see five British monarchs sitting on the throne. These include George V, the brief reign of Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II and now Charles III.
After attending the proclamation ceremony outside Leeds Civic Hall today (September 11), she called His Majesty’s reign “more hopeful” than she thought it would be as she’d dreaded the Queen’s demise.
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Freda, who’s originally from Keighley and a gran of three, said: “There was a lady here saying, ‘I’ll be 80 at the next proclamation and I won’t be fit to come’.
“I was listening in and I said, ‘I’m 90 and I think you might be fit to come!’ - It just depends how lucky you are.”
Freda was in her first year at school at the age of 5 when King George VI’s coronation took place in 1937. After he died 15 years later, Freda learned the tragic news in a classroom when she was training to be a teacher at 20 years old.
She was studying at a college in Coventry to become a teacher and attended Queen Elizabeth’s local proclamation ceremony in the city centre with colleagues from her course.
Freda said: “It had been bombed at the time, so the centre was quite damaged and it was empty. Very different to Coventry today.
“So I stood there just like how I am stood here today. The mayor of Coventry announced it and at the end she said, ‘The King is dead, long live the Queen!’
“And she almost slipped up and said ‘long live the King!’ and just managed to correct themselves.
“It wasn’t such a big crowd I don’t think but people stood there and really listened, because the proclamation [in London] wasn’t on television. We used to have to watch all these things in the cinema.”
Describing how she felt about King Charles III’s proclamation, she said: “It was the end of something and the beginning of something new. It was more hopeful than I thought it would be.
“I thought when the Queen goes, that would be it.”
Freda, who lives by the River Aire in Leeds city centre, said a highlight of the ceremony was when a dog appeared to cheer for the new monarch.
The 90-year-old said: “Everybody laughed, somebody was saying ‘he’s a corgi!’ and I think that lightened the atmosphere.”
The dog was actually a terrier called Titus, read all about that magical moment here.
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