William Taylor with his wife Harriet holding the framed photo and the certificates his family were awarded in 1902

It may look like a still taken from the BBC’s latest historical drama, but it’s a restored photo of the coronation dinner of Edward VII in the summer of 1902 – and dug out just in time for the King’s coronation this weekend.

Taken in Holford Square, King’s Cross – rebuilt in 1954 as housing estate Bevin Court after it was heavily bombed in the Second World War – the jubilant crowds can be seen sat along trestle tables tucking into a free dinner paid for by the King himself and other wealthy benefactors.

The framed photo of the King Edward VII’s coronation in 1902

The photo is part of retired chartered surveyor William Taylor’s collection and was taken by his great uncle Alfred Munro, who was the designated photographer on August 9, 1902.

Mr Taylor, who lives in Malvern Terrace, Barnsbury, less than a mile from the photo scene, inherited the collection of more than 600 pictures in 2019 and set about digitising them.

“It comes out of my grandfather’s photograph album, which we had in a great big box and no one really wanted to go through, but I decided that it was a task I’d like to do,” said Mr Taylor. “And out came the story of the coronation dinner.”

His grandfather, Bert Munro, was just 19 when he was appointed the master of ceremonies that day at Holford Square, where he lived with his family. Bert’s sister Dorothy, who died in 1990, later recalled serving more than 100 people potatoes boiled in new bin lids that day.

Bert (left) and Afred Munro around the time of the coronation

“What do you do if you want to cook a lot of potatoes?” Mr Taylor, 67, joked. “Get a big metal dustbin, you throw the potatoes in, put some water in and put a fire underneath and cook them, and that’s how they did it!”

Everyone at the street party would have been invited by the King and the borough of Finsbury, and anyone who helped ­– including all Mr Taylor’s relatives – was given a certificate and a mug from King Edward VII, known as a playboy prince during his lifetime.

The invitation from King Edward VII – due to a bout of appendicitis the coronation actually took place in August, a month later 

In an echo of modern times, he too ascended the throne in his later years following the death of his mother, Queen Victoria.

Explaining his fondness for the picture, which he has framed and hanging on the wall in his home, Mr Taylor said: “Well, because that photograph has got so much action in it, you’ve got movement. You’ve got the guy there looking at the photographer. You’ve got that little thing there, you’ve got this chap who’s quite interesting. You’ve got people coming looking out of the windows, you’ve got an awful lot going on in this space. It could almost be a film set and you feel that it’s really live. And then when you think, Lenin was looking at this, it brings the past alive in a way that you don’t otherwise sense. That’s why I like it so much.”

In a bizarre quirk of history, Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of socialist Russia, was living in Holford Square at the time of King Edward’s coronation and could have been watching the party, but as a foreign national he would not have been invited. Whether or not he would have wanted to go is a different matter!

Berthold Lubetkin-designed Bevin Court, built over Holford Square after bomb damage in the second world war

Apparently Bert and Lenin did once meet, says Mr Taylor, when his grandfather’s friends accidentally knocked the revolutionary’s hat off with an errant snowball. Lenin immediately marched up to young Bert and “boxed his ears”.

Bert’s father was legendary engineer RW Munro, who invented a machine that measured wind speed, and whose factory was based in Granville Place, King’s Cross.

While Mr Taylor and his wife Harriet will not be joining the throngs in town to celebrate the King’s inauguration tomorrow (Saturday) – they plan to watch the ­ceremony on the television – their daughter Amy is preparing to cheer on the new monarch.

What the photos looked like before they were restored and colourised