Season’s Last Royal Garden Party

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29268, 28 July 1960, Page 2

Season’s Last Royal Garden Party

IBV ZAL.M THOMAS)

LONDON. Some 8060 guests attended the last of the season’s garden parties at Buckingham Palace, yesterday. Women who wore their lightest dresses and prettiest hats were rewarded by a warm sunny afternoon. It was touch and go whether it would be fine after weeks of fickle weather: even so, a two-minute fall of hall threatened the party. The Queen was wearing a high-crowned hat of pink and white tulle with a plaited brim, and a cotton-satin, full-skirted dress and matching jacket in a pink and white smudge print. The Queen spoke to many people including members of war-time resistance. movements who came to London as guests of the R.A.F. Escaping Society. Elsewhere on the lawn the crowds gathered around Prince Philip. The Queen Mother wore a lovely coat and dress of lemon organza with a deep hem of guipure lace. Her large, matching hat was trimmed with soft feathers. Other members of the royal party included the Duchess of Kent, the young Duke of Kent (looking far more handsome than his pictures sometimes indicate) and the Princess Royal with her son and daughter-in-law. Lord and Lady Harewood. Princess Alexandra was spending the day at Cambridge with the King and Queen of Thailand who had just finished their State visit . of two days in London. Princess Margaret and Mr

. Antony Armstrong-Jones were not at this party. Tyburn Swamp Wandering around the wellkept gardens, among the beautifully landscaped lakes reflecting wild fowl and pink flamingoes, it is difficult to imagine that this place was once swampy ground through which the Tyburn river flowed. It was here that James I planted a garden of mulberry trees 350 years ago. One remains still. } Several houses have been built 1 on this site but in the early • eighteenth century the Duke of 1 Buckingham built a house here 1 from which the present palace—begun in 1825—took its name. ' William IV disliked the place E so much that he offered it to the ’ nation as a barracks. He did ' change his mind about this, but • died before the palace was com- ! pleted. It was from here that Queen 1 Victoria was married and during ‘ her long reign the great ballroom ■ and the east front were added. ! Then in 1912 George V gave the • front its present famous facade of Portland stone. Grand Entrance Guests attending the garden parties see little of the interior of the palace with the exception • of the grand entrance hall. Here, white marble staircases contrast with the scarlet carpet • and huge arrangements of flowers. 1 The lighting is diffused from the I gilt cornices and throws a soft : glow on the portraits of the . Queen’s ancestors and on the • white stone statues that are : spaced between the long, red damask covered couches. No-one seems to be able to say exactly how many rooms there are in the palace, the commonly quoted figure is 600 or more. Christchurch guests at the garden party included the fol- . lowing:—Mrs Nelson Belcher and Miss Margaret Belcher, Mr and ’ Mrs William Bunt, Mr and Mrs Sydney Gill, Mrs Randall Keene, ’ Mr and Mrs Clarence McCormick, Mr and Mrs Alan Perry, Miss ; Lilias Scott.