THE Queen is no stranger to our region having visited on numerous occasions during her 63 year reign.

View more photos from Her Majesty's visits to the region

Her first appearance as monarch was in October 1954 when she visited Newcastle, Sunderland and Chester-le-Street, although the first pictures surviving in The Northern Echo's archive are from June 4, 1956. Her Majesty arrived in Stockton by train and progressed to Teesport where the royal yacht Britannia was waiting to take her and Philip for an official tour of Sweden.

The most striking pictures in the Echo archive from those early years were taken on May 27, 1960, when the Queen visited Peterlee, Durham and Newton Aycliffe. Her day started when she stepped off a train at Horden and got into a new £10,000 rich maroon Rolls-Royce with an all-glass hood – the first time this vehicle had been seen in the provinces. It took her to visit her ordinary subjects living in the brutalist boxes of the new towns: the Tindles in Avon Road, Peterlee, and the Llewellyns in Barrington Way, Newton Aycliffe. William Llewellyn took Prince Philip into his Punch and Judy workshop – today, his son Brian, who was six when the royal visitors came to the door, is Darlington's Mr Punch and Judy.

Inbetween the new towns, there was a right royal slap-up dinner at Durham Castle: salmon mayonnaise, strawberries and cream, and coffee.

The day finished at RAF Middleton St George from where Her Majesty was flown home.

"The smiling Queen must have been enchanted with her welcome – and County Durham was certainly enchanted with its Queen," said The Northern Echo.