Royal doctor at Sandringham confirmed King George VI death in 1952 – Lynn News look-back part 1
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 one ...
The death of King George VI on Wednesday, February 6, 1952, was formally confirmed by Dr J Ansell, the Surgeon Apothecary to the Royal Household at Sandringham, the Lynn News and Advertiser reported.
Dr Ansell, of Wood Farm, Wolferton, had been summoned to Sandringham where the King had been found in his bed by a royal valet at 7.30am. Princess Elizabeth, who immediately became Queen, was informed of her father’s death while she was at the Royal Lodge in Kenya, on her way with the Duke of Edinburgh for their tour of Australia and New Zealand.
The Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and Prince Charles were at Sandringham House when the tragic news was broken.
An announcement from Sandringham stated: “The King, who retired last night in his usual health, passed away peacefully in his sleep early this morning.”
The Lynn News reported: “While King’s Lynn and the whole of West Norfolk joins the nation in mourning the death of King George VI, the local feeling of loss and depth of sympathy for the Royal Family is the more profound because of the attachment to the King’s home and estate at Sandringham.”
The news of the death was slow in reaching many people throughout West Norfolk, as a Lynn News reporter found out after being sent to interview residents on the Sandringham estate.
Five employees of one of the estate’s tenant farmers were sitting in the shelter of a haystack and eating their mid-day lunch after a morning chaff-cutting when the reporter broke the news to them.
“At first they refused to believe it and when they realised in shocked amazement that it was true, they sat silent with bowed heads for several moments. Their first thoughts were for the Queen and Queen Mary. They remembered Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh far away in Kenya and mourned their sad home-coming.
“With the thought of Princess Elizabeth in his mind, Mr A Daniels of Flitcham said slowly: ‘We haven’t got a King any more’.
“His workmates Mr G Booth of West Newton, Mr A Dix of Dersingham, Mr F Smith of Flitcham and Mr F Richards of Babingley, recalled seeing the King during the last few weeks. Mr Booth, who had acted as beater for the King on many occasions, and who remembers his father and grandfather, said: ‘He seemed to be handling his gun all right … but he did not seem to be his usual self’.”
At West Newton, housewives had been chatting in the morning sunshine as the milkman and baker called with their deliveries, wrote the reporter, before adding: “After the news had been broadcast, however, doors were shut and the village seemed unnaturally quiet, even when children ran home from school for their lunch.”
The Lynn News also reported that the estate villages of West Newton, Anmer, Flitcham and Dersingham were “shocked into stillness” on the Wednesday evening.
“The estate workers and retired servants of the King sat in their cottages. For them the King’s death is a lamentable severing of the relationship between the squire and his men. For them, more perhaps than any other of the King’s subjects, the night was a night for the expression of great grief.
“The clubs on the estate closed. No-one wished them to stay open.
“Outside Sandringham House the police guard on the gate was changed at long intervals and as dusk grew into dark other windows lit up to add their light to that which had been burning in one window all day.
“On the green turf near the two entrances, a group of Press photographers maintained an unrelieved vigil.”
On the following day, just before 9am, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret left Sandringham House by car for a brief service at Sandringham church before they walked slowly through the park back to the house.
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At the time it was reported that the stress of the Second World War had taken its toll on the King’s health. A heavy smoker, he developed lung cancer and in September 1951 had an operation to remove his left lung.
The Lynn News stated: “When he arrived at Wolferton station on December 21 it was the first time His Majesty had visited Norfolk since his serious lung operation.”
The King’s arrival at Sandringham was said to be for “the biggest Royal house party there since the war”.
