The Royal Funeral

Random recollections of Windsor in the 1950s

Published in Windlesora 20 (2003)

© WLHG

In the novel Martin Clitheroe Harrison Ainsworth wrote of his character John Brideoak: ‘He read with great rapidity and his memory was so extraordinarily retentive that he never forgot what he read however hastily’. Memory, however, is in reality a progressively elusive quarry. When invited to write a short article on aspects of Windsor fifty years ago, I agreed with some trepidation, having been for nearly half that decade working in London.

Pre-eminent in the early fifties are reminiscences of the death and funeral of King George VI. The King died at Sandringham on 6th February 1952 and after the Lying in State at Westminster Hall his funeral took place in Windsor on 15th February. I remember reading the newspaper headlines walking across Waterloo Bridge and opining magisterially to my somewhat bemused Principal on arrival at the office that this would mean big changes. ‘Why?’ he reasonably enquired, ‘Well, all the stamps will have to be changed’ was all I could think of on the spur of the moment.

On 8th February a large crowd, including the Corporation of the Royal Borough, assembled at Boehm’s statue of Queen Victoria on Castle Hill to hear read the sonorous words of the Proclamation of Queen Elizabeth’s Accession: ‘Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call to His mercy our late Sovereign Lord King George VI of blessed and glorious memory by whose decease the Crown is solely and rightfully come to the High and Mighty Princess Elizabeth…”. After this declamation by Alderman Richard Tozer, Mayor of the Royal Borough, on Castle Hill, a procession made its way to the Henry VIII Gateway, where the Proclamation was read again by Mr Norman Carr, the Recorder, and so to Eton where it was repeated by Mr Webster Storr, the Town Clerk.

By virtue of an uncle in the Royal Household, my family was enabled to witness the late King’s funeral procession from a position halfway up Cambridge Drive, exactly opposite the spot from which, 12 years earlier at the age of 5 I had been taken to see the funeral procession of King George V. The only memory retained of the latter is a cavalryman’s rearing horse to the accompaniment of and irreverent and anonymous shout of ‘Ride him cowboy!‘ Recollections of 1952, however, are much more lucid. It was bitterly cold. Beneath a mourning sky some 30,000 people were assembled in the Long Walk and Cambridge Drive alone, multiplied by tens of thousands thronging the route from the Great Western Station into which the Royal Train steamed at 1.10 pm precisely, its arrival signalled for the waiting crowds by the muffled boom of the first minute gun fired from Windsor Park. Continuously also, sounded from the Round Tower the deep note of the Sebastopol Bell, tolled only to mark the passing of an English monarch.

In the Lower Ward the route was lined by 600 cadets from Eton, Beaumont and Wellington and there, on the grass, lay a vast flowerbed of wreaths, one of which, from the British government in the form of a gigantic George Cross, was interwoven with the words ‘For Gallantry’ in white lilac and carnations. This wreath was inscribed by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, ‘In loyal and affectionate memory of their august sovereign King George VI, the Royal founder of the George Cross with humble duty from Her Majesty’s Government.’

The new Queen’s arrival at the station was heralded by the lowering of the Union Flag flying at half-mast on the Flag Tower since the King’s death, and the raising of the Royal Standard.

Before any part of the procession came into view its progress along High Street and Park Street was gauged by the haunting cadences of massed pipes and the beat of muffled drums. It was 1.26 pm when the first dismounted detachment of the Lifeguards moved through the Cambridge Gate on the last half mile to St George’s Chapel.

The slow-marching procession still evokes a flood of fleeting memories: the rhythmic thud of many marching feet, Chopin’s Funeral March played by the massed bands, the great phalanx of sailors from HMS Vanguard harnessed to the heavy gun carriage, their officers with swords reversed, an army of grey great-coated senior officers headed by three baton-carrying Field Marshals, Montgomery, Ironside and Alanbrooke, and above all, high on its warlike platform, the late King’s coffin swathed in the Royal Standard and bearing the glittering Imperial State Crown, the Orb and Sceptre, together with a white flowered wreath from her Majesty the Queen Mother, who exactly fifty years later was herself to be laid to rest beside her husband.

The coffin was followed on foot by the four Royal Dukes, Edinburgh, Gloucester, Windsor and Kent, and a closed carriage drawn by two Windsor Greys, in which the four black veiled figures of the Queen, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and the Princess Royal could only dimly be seen.

And so through the George IV Gateway, the Grand Quadrangle and the Upper, Middle and Lower Wards, the procession moved slowly on its way to be met at the Great West Door of St George’s Chapel by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishop of Winchester, Prelate of the Order of the Garter, and Bishop Eric Hamilton, Dean of Windsor. The cortege passed slowly inside…

John E Handcock