1926, Miss Winnie Yearsley: Queen Elect

LYMM HERITAGE CENTRE MAKES REMARKABLE DISCOVERY ON  QUEEN’S 90th BIRTHDAY. April 2016

On the 21st of April 1926, on the day the future Queen Elizabeth II  was born in Mayfair, a fourteen year old girl in Broomedge  near Lymm, Winnie Yearsley was making her daily deliveries of milk – pushing two large milk-cans hanging off the handlebars of her bicycle round the neighbourhood.

She would be returning  home in the evening to the tiny cottage where she and her family lived in a row of six dwellings  that shared one cold water tap.  There was no bathroom and only a communal toilet but soon there would be one very special item to grace the mantle over the open fire, for Winnie had been chosen as that year’s Lymm May Queen.

On the day, Whit-Thursday 1926, Winnie was the star of the show – being taken around the village in a coach pulled by six horses and with eight attendant maids.

It was a day the family never forgot. Her father was so proud that for many years  the crown was on display in a glass dome at the family cottage.  Winnie’s life continued to be hard, with periods in domestic service working fourteen hours a day and at the local salt works.  When her parents died she continued to treasure the crown and the memories it held.  And when she too passed on, it disappeared into a family loft.
But now in the very week that we celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday  and on the 90th anniversary of Winnie’s five minutes of fame as village "queen", the crown has been rediscovered in that loft and donated for all time to Lymm Heritage Centre. 

The crown went on public display for the first time since 1926 at Lymm May Queen celebrations on June 11th 2016