1926, Lymm May Queen Crown (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 for Lymm May Queen celebrations on June 11th, 2016