LARGE crowds turned out to see the presentation of new colours to the Territorial Army.

The ceremony involving the 4th Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, took place in brilliant sunshine at the Iffley Road rugby ground in Oxford on August 28, 1954.

A copy of the programme was found by Amanda Pratley, of Garsington, in her family belongings.

The battalion’s old colours – the Queen’s Colour and the Regimental Colour, presented by the future King Edward VII at Windsor in 1909 – were being ‘marched off’ and replaced by new colours.

There was a lengthy consecration service, conducted by the Assistant Chaplain General, the Rev K A Puntan, while music was provided by the band of the 1st Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and the bugle section of the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

Afterwards, the battalion, having been given the Freedom of the City, exercised its right to march through the streets with the band and bugles playing and colours flying.

The Oxford Mail reported: “Their smartness and precision was commented on by many of those who cheered them when they marched from Iffley Road along High Street, then through Catte Street to their headquarters. The mayor of Oxford, Alderman W R Gowers, took the salute outside The Queen’s College.”