ABBEY GRAVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 271, 15 November 1937, Page 9

ABBEY GRAVE.

LORD RUTHERFORD.

FIRST NEW ZEALANDER.

DISTIHGTTISHED GATHERING.

(Special.—By Air Mall.) LONDON, October 26. In the nave of Westminster Abbey, close to the graves of Newton, Darwin, and Herschel, the ashes of Lord Rutherford of Nelson were buried. New Zealand people present remembered the Nelson from which he took his title, the pleasant little town on a placid sea set in a half-circle of hills, and the college where as a boy he spent happy years, and they thought of the long journey that had ended in the great Abbey.

AH the voyal learned institutions were represented in the congregation which filled the centre of the Abbey. Among those in the choir stalls were Lord Rayleigb, Sir James Jeans, Sir William Llewellyn, Lord Macmilian, chairman of the commission which by its award of a scholarship had given young Rutherford his first great opportunity, with Professor Alexander and Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, two of the three bearers of the Order of Merit who had come to honour a fourth. The third was Sir William Bragg, president of the Royal Society.

Among the ten men who walked beside the coffin as it was borne into the Abbey led by choir and clergy singing the opening sentences of the burial service were Mr. W. J. Jordan, the New Zealand High Commissioner, Lord Dawson of Penn, Professor H. R. Dean, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Professor W L. Bragg, of Manchester University, and Professor Eve, of McGill (Canada). A Great New Zealander. When the hymns had been sung and the Sub-Dean, Canon Storrs, bad said several prayers, the choir and clergy formed into procession again and the coffin was borne through the choir to the graveside, followed by the mourners, the rest of the congregation following at an interval. The great nave was filled with sunshine, and light fell on the figures of the small boy and girl. Lord Rutherford's grandchildren, who stood beside their father, Professor Fowler, and Lady Rutherford while the committal sentences were said by Canon Storrs. Among those gathered in the nave were Lord Fortescue, who represented the King. Karl Baldwin, Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald. Lord Crawford, Viscount" Halifax, Sir Samuel Hoare, and Viscount Bledisloe, former Governor-General of New Zealand.

When the congregation had gone quantities of beautiful wreaths from people in all parts of the world were placed about the grave till that corner of the nave glowed like a garden. The wreath from Canterbury College bore the inscription "New Zealand mourns its most illustrious son." "In affectionate memory of New Zealand's greatest son" was on the wreath from Lord and Lady Bledisloe. It was the first time such inscriptions had been seen in the Abbey, for no ether New Zealander is buried there.