King George VI’s coffin laid-in-state in Sandringham church of St Mary Magdalene

Published: 06:01, 06 February 2022

The Lynn News is looking back 70 years to a sad day when King George VI died at the Sandringham royal estate on Wednesday, February 6, 1952. This is part five ...

Within an hour of the arrival of the Queen at Sandringham, late on Friday, February 8, the King’s coffin was on its way across the grounds to the candle-lit church of St Mary Magdalene, for a lying-in-state with keepers and other estate workers on guard.

As the sad procession moved slowly along the private pathway, Pipe-Major Alexander Macdonald, the King’s Piper, played a lament as he led the way. The coffin was made from oak grown on the estate and it was borne on a simple wheeled bier, accompanied by four of the estate carpenters who had helped make it – Harold Standaloft and Horace Crisp (both of Dersingham), and Tony Crowe and James Emerson jnr (both of West Newton).

While the coffin of the King was lying in the Sandringham estate church of St Mary Magdalene, from the evening of Friday February 8, members of the estate staff kept vigil in relays of four every two hours. Here the four keepers at their posts round the coffin draped with the Royal Standard are Mr W Clarke and Mr E Dodds, head keeper (left and right in the foreground, with Mr R Amos and Mr S Hooks in the background. On the coffin is the wreath of the Queen Mother, at the foot that of Princess Margaret, and that of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh was placed at the head.

Behind walked the Queen and the Queen Mother, followed by the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Margaret.

At the lychgate, through which the King had walked only a few days before, the coffin was borne up the steps and through the churchyard – past the grave of the King’s brother, Prince John, who died in childhood – to the church porch where the rector, the Rev H Anderson stood waiting to receive it.

The coffin was placed before the silver altar and, after a short service conducted by the rector, the mourning party returned to Sandringham House.

The first stage of the King’s last journey from his Norfolk home had been completed with all the privacy the King loved at Sandringham.

Nostalgia Chris Hornby