Regarding the 1953 Coronation evening event venue (group photograph above), thanks to contributor Sue Malling and the sharp memory of her mother in law Margaret Dawkins, who is one of the young adults in the photograph, we now know where it was held. It was not in a school behind the Yew Tree pub as I previously thought but in a function room above the Birmingham Cooperative Society grocery store in Stoney Lane, near the Yew Tree. Apparently dances were regularly held there. I remember as a child being taken to the upstairs room by my mother when she went to see Co-op cookery or product demonstrations. I suspect that the building still stands and is divided up into three shops. The shop seemed vast when I was an infant. Here is the building I mean on Google Street View with the BCS logo clearly visible.
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