"The expressions on the faces in the streets provided ample evidence of the sense of personal loss."

So reported our sister paper the Kentish Gazette after the news was first announced on radio, on February 6, 1952, that King George VI had died.

Canterbury Cathedral's Bell Harry, used only for the passing away of kings and archbishops, now tolled mournfully every minute.

Enter the Second Elizabethan era where a young married mother-of-two, aged 25, suddenly had the bewildering and Herculean responsibility of becoming Queen of Great Britain and its Empire and Commonwealth.

What was life like in 1952?

The country the Queen took over in 1952 was a gloomy place.

Britain was still suffering from the Second World War, with people having meagre meals through rationing - and bomb-sites still pockmarked the country.

Pollution from industry, vehicle emissions and even home heating choked towns and cities. peaking most disastrously in 1952 with The Great Smog of London, in which thousands died.

The households seeing the ascension of Elizabeth II were usually the traditional nuclear families of two parents and two children.

They lived in a house that would have cost on average £1,891 in early 1952 (£65,224 at present value).

Property was cheaper in those days as there was less pressure to get on the housing ladder. Many people simply rented council homes.

An average house price by the late 50s was 4.6 times the average annual income but it was 8.3 times in 2021.

With the rigid gender structures of the day usually only the husband and father was the breadwinner and the wife and mother stayed at home and looked after the children.

Dad probably drove to work in an Austin A30, which would have cost him £529 brand new.

To fill up he would pay at least three pre-decimal shillings (15p) per gallon (4.55 litres) of four star petrol.

For the 1953 coronation the family would have saved up for a television set, then still a luxury.

It only showed black and white pictures, had one channel and was just 12in in size but cost £800 (£1,800 in today's money).

The only commonplace outlet for news and entertainment in the home was the radio (then known as "the wireless").

However, newsreels were also shown in the many cinemas in towns and cities.

The most popular newspaper of the time was the Daily Mirror, priced at 1d (0.5p).

By the mid-1950s only 14% of households had a telephone and they cost £12 a year to rent.

Food was packaged purely by imperial calculations and a pound of Brooke Bonde PG Tips tea cost six shillings and eightpence (33.5p).

A 26 fluid ounce (739 millilitre) bottle of Robinsons orange squash cost three shillings and thrupence (16p).

The death of King George VI

The loss of the King was felt as another personal blow to the British people.

George VI had been popular, bringing back public esteem in the Royal Family after the upheaval over the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, in 1936.

Respect for him soared during the Second World War when he became a role model, remaining stoic and sharing hardships.

He wouldn't move out of Buckingham Palace despite it being bombed during the Blitz. He was almost killed when a bomb exploded in a courtyard. George VI's younger brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed on active service.

During the war the King and Queen also accepted food rationing, like the rest of the population.

They also provided morale-boosting visits throughout the United Kingdom, at bomb sites, munitions factories, and meeting troops.

George VI, who was just 56, had suffered conditions such as cancer and circulation problems and he finally died of a coronary thrombosis, a clot in a heart blood vessel that can cause a heart attack.

As the King's health declined during 1951, Elizabeth frequently stood in for him at public events.

When she toured Canada and visited President Harry S. Truman in the United States, in October 1951, her private secretary carried a draft accession declaration in case the King died while she was away.

The new Elizabethan age begins

It was while in Kenya, during a Commonwealth tour, that Elizabeth learned of her father's death.

The Queen’s private secretary, Martin Charteris, first broke the news to Prince Philip who then told his wife.

Lord Charteris remembered seeing the new monarch at her desk appearing “very composed, absolute master of her fate” and ready to fulfil the role for which she had been groomed.

Asked what name she wished to use as Queen, she replied simply: “My own name, of course.”

The new Queen and Duke of Edinburgh flew home and landed at London Airport, now Heathrow, next day, February 7, at 4pm.

The first major tragedy she saw in Britain during her reign was the Great Smog of London, which killed 4,000 people in December 1952.

It is thought to be the worst air pollution incident in the history of the United Kingdom.

Above all the source of this was the heavy use of coal at the time for domestic heating, but also in power stations, and some coming from the Kent collieries of Betteshanger, Chislet, Snowdown and Tilmanstone.

Added to this were fumes from cars, steam trains and diesel-fuelled buses, which had replaced the capital's eco-friendly electric trams just five months earlier.

Other industrial and commercial sources added to the toxic air but the final straw that month was people stoking up their coal fires during a cold snap and wind conditions that led to the massing of airborne pollutants.

All this caused the thick smoke to hang over the capital, reducing visibility to a metre at worst.

Government medical reports in the following weeks estimated that up to 4,000 people had died and 100,000 more were taken ill.

The Queen had begun to visit Kent in her first years, for example to Folkestone and Dover with the Duke of Edinburgh in April 1958.

But one of the first arrivals by a major Royal in the new era was her sister Princess Margaret in Folkestone in July 1952.

Monica Ellenden, three, a patient at the town's Royal Victoria Hospital was one of the delighted youngsters who met her.

This was when the Princess toured the children's ward, medical and surgical wards and a new wing built to replace one destroyed by German shellfire during the war.

She also visited the town's Bruce Porter Home for invalid children, where she unveiled a plaque beside a lift donated to the home by the people of Folkestone and Hythe.

Princess Margaret rounded off her trip with tea at the Leas Cliff Hall.

The coronation of Elizabeth II took place on June 2, 1953, at Westminster Abbey in London.

It was held more than a year after she became Queen to allow time to pass after George VI died and to give the chance to plan the massive event.

To this day it is the only British coronation to have been fully televised; the cameras had not been allowed inside the abbey during her parents' crowning in 1937.

Millions across Britain watched the ceremony live on the BBC Television Service and many bought or rented TV sets for the first time for this event.

Towns, cities and villages across Kent celebrated.

A pageant took place along Canterbury's city wall by the Dane John mound.

One woman, Lady Ampthill, was dressed as Elizabeth I to stress the city's links with the monarchy through the centuries.

At a street party in Mill Hill, Deal, one neighbour, Heather Smith, dressed as the new monarch.

The community of Chislet near Canterbury crowned their own coronation queen, local girl, Joyce Simmonds.

Street parties were also held in neighbourhoods such as Cowdray Square in Deal.

By chance Kent had other Royal presences in these years.

In May 1952 King Frederik IX of Denmark, Colonel-in-Chief of The Buffs, inspects a Guard of Honour at the Barracks at St Martin's Hill, Canterbury.

He was in the city to unveil a memorial window in the Warriors' Chapel of the cathedral to commemorate those soldiers who died in the Second World War.

Queen Salote Tubou, of the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga, was then staying in England.

She was photographed for the Kent Messenger in April 1953 visiting King's School in Canterbury and then went to the Cathedral.

Bunting was put out in places such as Star Hill in Rochester and children at Ashford's Woolreeds Road area put on fancy dress.

Patients and staff at Willesborough Hospital in Ashford also raised their glasses in celebration.