"As far as I know it's still there now" - Retired Halifax businessman recalls meeting the Queen and delivering specially-made carpet to Windsor Castle

Michael Oates used to own Avena Carpets and delivered a specially made carpet to the Queen at Windsor Castle in 1978.

"We started Avena Carpets in 1976, I'd worked for Crossleys for 20 years as product development manager and wanted to do something on my own," he said.

"I bought six looms from them and formed Avena up in Denholme.

"We had quite a lot of good contacts from Crossleys, one of whom was David Hicks, whose wife Pamela was a Mountbatten, which is the royal connection.

"David rang me and asked if we'd like to make a carpet for the garter throne room.

"We'd only been going a short while and we didn't have our own design department so I went to Bradford College of Textile Design and asked them if they'd like to have a design competition.

"A few weeks later I had a bundle of a dozen or so designs to take to Windsor Castle.

"I was asked to go there as the Queen wanted to examine them, so I went to the garter throne room at Windsor, with all these design papers threw around the floor.

"The Queen came in and at one point the Queen and I were on our hands and knees on the floor, trying to keep the Corgi's off the designs, and she said 'I think you'd better make a bit extra because Phillip will probably knock his pipe out on it!"

Michael met the Queen twice, the second time when the carpet was delivered.

"We wove it and then I took it down in our van," he said.

"I drove up into Windsor Castle, through the gates in our Avena Carpets van, through the crowds of people all wondering what I was doing there.

"As far as I know it's still there now."

The company also made five carpets for Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they lived at Highgrove.

"I've got a lovely photograph of Harry just learning to walk, and William is holding his hand, and they're walking across the nursery on the carpet we made," Michael said.

Michael retired over 20 years ago but the company is still running and is now based in Southowram.

He says the Queen was very friendly and very normal, and says it's fantastic that she has reached so long on the throne.

"My wife said to me 'make sure you know what she was wearing won't you'," Michael said.

"So when I came back, she said 'well, what was she wearing?', and I said 'she'd just been riding so she had an Airtex shirt and jodhpurs on!

"It was summer time and a wasp came in, and she didn't like wasps so she was swatting this wasp away, which was quite funny."

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