HERE's how East Lancashire typically celebrated the Coronation 50 years ago -- with a street party.

Among many held across the region, this one (pictured above), took place in Baines Street in Blackburn's Audley area on the weekend prior to the Tuesday, June 2, 1953, crowning.

Scores of events were staged in East Lancashire on the day itself -- everything from cricket matches and concerts to bonfires and community singing.

Lots of people, however, stayed glued to the seven hours of televised coverage of the Coronation processions and ceremony in London. Many homes acquired their first-ever TVs for the occasion.

But "public" viewing was arranged in schools and assembly rooms in several communities for those without sets -- among them the scores of old folk, wrapped in blankets and armed with flasks and sandwiches, who watched the event on the 15 sets installed in the "TV theatre" created in an upstairs room in Abbey Street, Accrington, by electrical dealers W.W. Bleasdale and Co.

One of the biggest events held in East Lancashire took place on the previous Sunday - when members of 14 Church of England parishes in Blackburn staged what was considered to be the largest religious procession the town had ever seen.

With seven bands and more than 5,000 taking part -- almost half of them children -- it stretched for half a mile and was watched by thousands crowding the pavements along its route through the town-centre streets.