SUPREME MOMENT OF THE CORONATION

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 11 (Supplement)

SUPREME MOMENT OF THE CORONATION

CROWN OF ST. EDWARD ON QUEEN’S HEAD

Then The Trumpets Sound And The Guns Fire

PROCESSION TWO MILES LONG

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RANALD MACLURKIN,

Reuter’s Correspondent.]

LONDON. Trumpets in England’s historic Westminster Abbey and guns fired from the Tower of London will signal the crowning on June 2 of Queen Elizabeth TT

When the trumpets sound and the guns fire, those in the Abbey and the millions outside who will be listening to the ceremony by radio and seeing it on television will know that the Crown of St. Edward has been placed on the head of the Queen. They will know, too, that she is then half-way through a long ceremony which from start to finish will last two and a-half hours, and that she is henceforth “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith,” the forty-first Sovereign to ascend the Throne since the Norman, William the Conqueror.

It will be the supreme moment of the Coronation, which will be followed during the afternoon by a Coronation procession through London two miles long, in which thousands of troops from every part of the Commonwealth will take part, in which will ride the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth, State officials, visiting representatives of Kings and Queens, native rulers from the Queen’s overseas realms, and which will be watched by millions of people.

Throughout the early morning hours of June 2, people from all parts of Britain and abroad will begin to line the route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey to see the Queen leave the palace in the golden Coach of State. They will have come through the darkness and the dawn by underground trains, steam trains, coaches, omnibuses and on foot, many of them with tickets for seats on the route, most of them ready to stand for hours packed shoulder to shoulder to see the procession. Thousands of the women spectators who will line the route will be wearing special dresses with a patriotic motif of red, white and blue. They will have a long wait, for not until 7.40 p.m. (G.M.T) will the first cars, carrying some members of the British Royal Family, leave Buckingham Palace for the Abbey. Ten minutes later a long procession of more than 70 limousines will drive out of the palace gates bearing foreign royalty and other foreign representatives. Later still, the first procession will appear from the palace courtyard. In it will ride rulers from Britain’s tropical colonies and protectorates in native dress. Among them will be sixfeet tall Queen Salote of the Tonga Islands, in the Pacific, who has been the guest of Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace since she arrived in Britain, and the Sultans of Zanzibar, Johore, Selangor, Kalantan, Perak, Brunei and Lahej.

Leading Personalities Then, in fairly quick succession, will come some of the leading personalities in the day’s pageantry. A procession of nine carriages from the palace will carry to the Abbey the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth, including Sir Winston Churchill.

Next will come carriages containing the Princes and Princesses of the Blood Royal, among them the Queen’s aunts and cousins, followed by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, with Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister, seated at her side in a carriage which will drive to the Abbey from Clarence House, the Queen Mother’s residence.

Soon the crowds packed around Buckingham Palace and the long wide drive of The Mall will hear the roll of drums and the blare of brass as bands of the Guards strike up to lead Queen Elizabeth’s own procession from Palace to Abbey.

One single officer, Colonel B. J. 0. Burrows, Inspector of the Trooping at the War Office, will lead this procession on horseback. Behind him will follow four mounted troopers of the Household Cavalry, and following this simple beginning, 1000 Guardsmen and a cavalcade of Admirals, Field Marshals, Generals and Air Marshals, some on horseback, some walking, some in landaus. Behind them, drawn by eight Windsor Greys from the Royal Stables, will come

the Queen in her 192-years-old coach, with its figures of gilded palm trees and sea-gods rising from each corner of the swinging undercarriage.

Queen’s Robe of Crimson Velvet The Queen will wear a robe of crimson velvet, a diadem on her head, and by her side will sit her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, wearing the gold-braided, blue uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet. Down the broad, gaily decorated Mall, the wide avenue which leads to the very heart of London, the procession will pass under four spectacular arches of tubular steel, surmounted by dancing lions and unicorns. Huge coronets will hang from the 65-foot arches, looking as though they were hanging in air without support.

Behind will ride more horsemen—the Lord High Constable, Field-Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke; the Queen’s Master of the Horse, the Duke of Beaufort; the Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard; an<i others.

Then will follow the Royal Standard and, riding immediately behind it as personal aides-de-camp to the Queen, her uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and Earl Mountbatten of Burma. At the end of the glittering parade will follow equerries to the Queen and two more divisions of the Sovereign’s Escort. The procession will pass from the Mall into Trafalgar square, dominated by the column and statue of Admiral Lord Nelson, where even the high rooftops will be crammed with spectators, down Northumberland avenue to the Embankment along the River Thames. There, along the waterfront, ships will be flying almost every flag ever seen on the oceans of the world.

Then, just as Big Ben, the clock on the Houses of Parliament, is striking 11 o’clock, the golden coach will halt outside Westminster Abbey.

Seven Thousand Guests From early morning, 7000 guests will have been arriving at the Abbey, where English monarchs have been crowned for 900 years. Statesmen and poets, peers and peeresses will have stepped from a constant flow of cars; men and women in striking native garb from every part of the Commonwealth will have mingled with thousands of Britons in their Court Dress of silk velvet breeches with buckled shoes, silken hose and black cocked hats and their ladies in silks and ermine.

Queen Elizabeth will step from her coach on to a blue carpet running from the Nave of the Abbey to the entrance of a £50,000 annex of white timber and pillars of tubular steel specially built for the Coronation.

Flowers flown from all parts of the Commonwealth will be, banked in the annex, where a line of sculptured mythical and heraldic animals look down on the scene of pageantry. The “Queen’s Beasts,” as they are called, include fabu-

lous monsters such as the Griffin, with the head of an eagle, the body of a lion, and the tail of a serpent. The Duke of Norfolk, England’s Premier Duke who, as Earl Marshal, has been the chief planner of the Coronation, will meet the Queen at the entrance to the Annex. And in the entrance hall, flooded with rainbow light from the coloured glass of the windows, the Queen will be received by high ceremonial officers, the Lords who will carry the Regalia, and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

The Guard of Honour

The Queen, with the Duke of Edinburgh, will pass between a guard of honour of the Queen’s Company, Grenadier Guards, every man in it over 6 feet three inches in height, and will go to a robing room in the Annex, its floor covered in gold carpet, to complete her robing for the big ceremony still to come. In the vestibule, she will join the procession which has meanwhile been forming. Six Maids of Honour, daughters of British Dukes and Peers, will arrange themselves, three on each side, to carry the long train which flows from the Queen’s robe. And from this point begins the Crowning Ceremony from which the Queen, two and a half hours later, will emerge as a crowned monarch. Slowly and solemly the Procession moves into the Abbey through the West Door. At its head are the Royal Chaplains followed by the representatives of the Free Churches and religious "dignitaries of Westminster. Behind them, like figures on a pack of playing cards in their gold and velvet tabards (tunics) come the Heralds and the Kings of Arms, ceremonial officers in attendance on the Sovereign. Standard Bearers carry the flags of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The Union Standard is borne by Captain J. L. M. Dymoke, the Queen’s Champion, whose ancestors used to appear fully armed on horseback at the Coronation

Banquet and challenge to fight anyone who disputed the Monarch’s right to the Crown. This custom has now died out, and the right to carry a Standard has been given to the Dymoke family as a compensation.

Carrying the Royal Standard is one of Britain’s outstanding soldiers, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein. In another section of the Grand Procession walk the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth nations, preceded by their High Commissioners carrying the flags of their countries. Fifteen trumpeters in mediaeval uniform, gold and crimson bannerets hanging from their instruments, sound a fanfare as the Queen herself is due to enter the Abbey.