AN ADORABLE image shows a tot wearing the exact same dress her great-grandmother wore for the Queen’s Coronation 70 years ago.
Little Brooke Searchfield tried on 71-year-old Ann Baker’s hand-stitched frock this week ahead of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee on Monday.
Black and white images show Ann, from Bristol, in 1952 when she was two-years-old wearing the dress which was handmade by her seamstress mother Lily-Ann Johnson.
The special design features embroidered guards wearing bearskin hats and the Queen’s golden carriage being drawn along by horses.
Seven decades on, Ann is set to celebrate the Jubilee this weekend with her two-year-old great-daughter wearing the old smock dress.
Ann had kept the heirloom in a box in her attic over the years and took it with her whenever she moved house.
Speaking today, Ann said: “It made me emotional [seeing Brooke in the dress].
“I can remember the Coronation, I was two-years-old when she was crowned and people were dancing and singing.
“I was alive when she came to the throne and I am alive to watch her celebrate 70 years later thankfully.
“I kept the dress as it was made with love and my mother had raised me by herself back in the 1950s so it has always just come with me from house to house in a box as I got to keep it.”
Brooke’s mum, Kerry Searchfield, 30, today said: “My nan showed me the dress when I was pregnant and I said it would be amazing for my future daughter to wear.
“To begin with Brooke wouldn’t actually put the dress on but then once she put it on she wouldn’t take it off.
“For me, my relationship with my nan is so special and to get to see my daughter in the dress that her mum made for her from scratch it’s hard to describe.
“We never had an occasion for me to wear the dress but it is such a special heirloom for the family and something that we can keep in future generations too.
“It is emotional I suppose as her mum made the dress then completed the embroidery and everything, it’s very special.”
The Queen was informed of her ascension to the throne while abroad in Kenya in 1952.
It made her the first monarch in over 200 years to ascend while not in the United Kingdom.
