The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 49 No.4 | March 2023

Member’s article

“My husband and I” met HM The Queen

I am responding to the Editor’s suggestion in his message in the last edition concerning members’ meetings with the late Queen. George, (my husband of 61 years) and I have been HGS members for some 28 years since we moved to Verwood in retirement. We met HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip when HM The Queen opened the multi million pound Elmsleigh Shopping Centre in Staines in February 1979. In 1964 George had been appointed Deputy Clerk of Staines UDC, was then promoted to Clerk of the Council and finally spent the last 15 years of his working life until 1973 as the first Chief Executive of Spelthorne Borough Council. This meant that by 1979 he had spent a considerable part of 15 years of his life on the planning and building of Phase 1 of a “Comprehensive Development Area” (CDA) in Staines Town Centre. The Elmsleign Shopping Centre was a crucial part of Phase 1. It was serviced from a new overhead road which would facilitate the eventual pedestrianisation of Staines High Street, once part of the A30 Trunk Road until by-passed. Phase 1 embraced the following lengthy preliminary operations however. A ) Two public inquiries and several Court cases. B)The acquisition of over 100 interests in land. C)The removal of several hundred yards of disused railway on a high embankment D)Building replacements for factories, a synagogue, two Scout huts and a private bowling green and clubhouse.

E)The reburial of bodies from a Quaker burial ground at the London Necropolis Cemetery at Brookwood F)Constructing a major new inner relief road G)Building a bus station, a Multi Storey Car Park and several hundred surface car parking spaces. H)A compulsory purchase order, procedures to close existing highways and footpaths I) Diverting public utility services and J) Building a major surface water pumping station disguised as a park pavilion on the parkland fronting the Thames. All this against a background of central government restraints on local authority borrowing to spend on major capital developments The statue “Five swimmers” was by David Wynne who sculpted “Boy on a Dolphin at St. Katherine’s Dock and also designed the clasped hands on the 50p coin Following this letter from Sir Philip Moore, the Private Secretary to HM The Queen, we, together with our 18 year old daughter, were invited to a Royal Garden Party. We have also been privileged to meet other members of the Royal family in the course of royal openings occurring in the course of my husband’s work namely the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and The Duchess of Kent. My husband can also be blamed for causing confusion for family historians by his part in overseeing the transfer of Staines Urban District to Surrey on the abolition of Middlesex County Council in 1965.

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