大象传媒

During World War Two royal visits were often made at short notice and did not have the advanced publicity of peace time. This was often the case in Trowbridge, where one of our regular visitors was Her Majesty Queen Mary. Throughout the war she stayed at Badminton House with the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort and often came to Wiltshire.

Rumour has it that she would sometimes stop the royal car to give servicemen lifts. An impending visit often got round by word of mouth and on one memorable occasion we heard from a lady working at one of the Spitfire factories that the Queen was coming. I always recall this being on a Saturday afternoon and a group of us children waited on the corner of Victoria Road on the outskirts of the town. Sure enough the royal car drew up and out stepped Queen Mary, prim as always with a rolled umbrella. She went into the factory. Just us, a small group of officials and Her Majesty!

The Queen also visited the town's woollen mills and these visits were photographed and are well documented in local history books. Another time she visited a factory in the town centre. This was Hadens, famous for central heating, but now making munitions. History was in fact being repeated because this was one of the factories visited by King George and Queen Mary in WW1. This was of course before my time, but I have one of the national dailies giving full details of their visit to 'a west country town'.

One royal visit sadly had tragic consequences. Sometimes Princes Mary, the Princess Royal, came with her, and it was either the Queen or the Princess who visited one of the local camps. After the visit, celebrations continued into the night. Air raid precautions were not taken with the result that the camp was bombed and soldiers killed.

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