Majestic moments!

HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS TAKES AN ILLUMINATING LOOK BACK AT A TOWN LANDMARK - AND ITS LINKS WITH ROYALTY

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THIS week, we're in Newcastle and considering why 1949 was a special year for the town. It marked the beginning of the long-running Newcastle Illuminations as well as a visit by a young woman destined to be immortalised in the open space that would be the focal point of the light show.

Queen's Gardens, at the foot of the Ironmarket, was that green oasis and it was reported in September of that year that the gardens as well as the Nelson Place roundabout had been specially illuminated as part of the Battle of Britain Week festivities in the town. The coruscating lights, it seems, remained switched on for a number of weeks drawing fatuous, though inevitable, comparisons with those in a famous Lancashire seaside town.

The Sentinel's estimable Observer scribed in his commentary: "Two dear old ladies, elderly but not old - one is 87 and the other is 97 - have been to Newcastle to see 'the lights' and now they have engaged a car to go to Blackpool to see 'the illuminations.' They will go in the afternoon and return in the early evening hours of the morning. Enthusiasm and endurance! But you must recognise that you are a back number unless you have seen Blackpool illuminations."

The illuminations and floral displays around Queen's Gardens met with the approbation of many, with one town councillor musing that they might be further augmented at a future date. Alderman J H Ramsbotham went further than that, enthusing that it was a pity the illuminations could not have been on every night.

"I am told that for their size," he beamed, "they compared favourably with Blackpool and people after seeing them do not have to travel and get back in the early hours of the morning."