WHEN the Queen visited St Helens in 1977 as part of her Silver Jubilee celebrations, our Star photographer Terry Brunskill would have loved nothing more than to grab a nostalgic chat with her.

It was not to be. Terry was too busy snapping the street parties and thousands of flag waving wellwishers cheering the royal limo on its progress around town.

But that day must have sparked a unique flashback for Terry, who has just died at the age of 84.

Twenty four years earlier he had shared the most memorable event in the Queen’s life when as a dashing young lance corporal in the Royal Military Mounted Police he rode as an escort in her Coronation procession of 1953.

Terry was one of the four ‘Mounties’ handpicked to take part in the spectacular event and found himself riding tall in the saddle behind the open carriage of the exotic Queen Salote of Tonga. His royal adventure took shape when he served two years national service at Aldershot with the RMMP.

But anyone who knew Terry could not wish to meet a more down to earth son of St Helens who lived all his life on Fleet Lane. Talking to him years after the big day, you sensed his immense pride... and relief that everything went without a hitch!

Terry also galloped into a TV role kitted out as a sabre wielding hussar aboard his trusty mount Tony for a special recreation of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the century earlier Crimean War.

Back in civvy street Terry and his late brother Jim were both keen photographers and set up a wedding and portrait studio in North Road within the YMCA buildings and by a later happy twist of fate… slap next door to the St Helens Star offices after our move from Corporation Street.

Terry was our Star photographer in those early years from the paper’s launch in 1973, snapping the people and events which shaped the life of our town through those years. At the St Helens Show vast crowds rolled into Sherdley Park to cheer on the big events like the Star’s Mother and Baby Contest. The brothers had the annual task of taking individual shots of all the mums and their cheeky cherubs. And for tearful tots, a Basil Brush puppet was wheeled out to coax a sunny smile.

Every year when the closing date approached, there’d be a gaggle of mums and babes snaking up North Road from the studio. At its height the contest was pulling in more than 800 entries. And this was in the days before digital, the photos had to be developed and printed in the dark room beneath their studios. Jim would often joke with Terry that he felt like a mushroom… kept in the dark and fed manure!

With his infectious sense of humour and broad smile Terry became a roving ambassador for the Star on all those thousands of photo calls. He lugged his camera case to every school in the borough bringing delight to so many youngsters. He chronicled umpteen presentations at the town hall and in factories and businesses around the area.

The town’s sporting community was well served too with cup and medal presentations from crown green to cricket and rugby (Terry had played with the oval ball for Lancashire as a teenager) to rounders. Many of these jobs would often take place in pub and club function rooms amid a tobacco smog which often led to, in Jim and Terry’s code, an RFOS (a roomful of smoke). And no pensioners’ outing to Blackpool was complete until Terry or Jim had lined them up for a picture before the old folks boarded their seaside-bound ‘sharra’.

Countless couples celebrating their big day would also have been eagerly waiting for the knock on the door. Terry’s son Gary, who also clicked with a career as a press photographer, holds a treasured memory of accompanying his dad on a job in Parr.

He told me: “I remember going along to a house in Parr with my dad to photograph a couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary. An old gent answered the front door in a vest and trousers held aloft with braces. He smiled and said ‘come in lads’ then shouted up the stairs ‘Mother!... mon from’t Star’s ere, fot tek thi forter’ …. happy days!”

Terry married Dorothy, who lived at the side of the Cherry Tree Pub on Fleet Lane, at Parr St Peter’s Church in 1954 and their home for 50 years was opposite The Railway Hotel also on Fleet Lane. They were blessed with three children, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Terry retired in 2001. He passed away in Madison Court Nursing Home… just a stone’s throw from his beloved Fleet Lane.