As the Queen’s coffin emerged from Westminster Hall just before eleven o’clock for the short, slow journey to her funeral service at Westminster Abbey, the thousands who had gathered at Parliament Square, on Whitehall, and along the Mall, gradually fell into silence. The companionable chatter stilled, some climbed to their feet from folded chairs. Some bowed their heads.
Many, even among those who had been there all night, were dressed in black, others wore a chestful of medals or a union jack waistcoat, or wrapped themselves in a flag. There were woolly beanies and black fascinators, selfie sticks and a few stepladders.
Each had come for his or her own reason: to express personal sadness at the Queen’s death, to represent absent family members who would have wanted to be there – or just to be part of a big day. Janine Cleere from Wiltshire had camped out all night on the Mall, sharing a single sleeping bag with two friends against the September chill in order to be “part of history”.
“She’s all we have ever known and now we have her no longer,” she said. “It’s very sad.”
For Christina Burrows, who had bagged a spot next to a bollard on Whitehall, it was important to come. “I’ve always seen her as a beacon. During lockdown, when she said ‘We’ll meet again’, that was wonderful. It gave me a lot of hope. I wanted to be here for her like she was for us.”
As she spoke, she sighed and clapped her hands to her face. “Oh God, I can’t believe it. There will never be another day like this in our lives.”
For some, the early start and long, long wait had taken its toll. Having left home in Northampton at 4am, passing some of the hours by counting the windows in Buckingham Palace, seven-year-old Esther Young dropped off on the lap of a family friend just as the long-awaited service began.
A million people had been expected to come to central London on Monday. Many tens of thousands had done so already in the strange days since she died, queueing for hours along the Southbank in a display of self-consciously British resilience of which the late monarch herself would surely have been proud.
Late on Sunday the queue was closed, and at 6.30am Chrissy Heerey, a serving member of the RAF from Melton Mowbray, became the very last member of the public to pass by the coffin in Westminster Hall. It was, she said, “one of the highlights of my life … I feel very privileged to be here”.
Outside, some were going to work or coming home from a bank holiday night out; others were preparing for a big day ahead. Outside Buckingham Palace those who had camped out for days were desperately trying to hold on to their spots in the front row. Cara Jennings, 52, from Minster in Kent was wrapped in a blanket after her fifth night camping by Green Park.
With her mobility scooter parked beside her pop up blue tent, she tried to guard her position at the front row of the railing on the Mall. “I just wanted to get a perfect spot to pay my respects to a lovely woman,” she said. Jennings said her grandmother and great-grandmother had worked for the queen as cleaners and that her five children thought it was “brilliant” that she’d made the pilgrimage.
Not everyone was there as an ardent royalist. Antonis Manvelides, 24, and Jess Nash, 24, had come to the Mall on their fourth date, walking from Nash’s flat in Pimlico at 4am to be there. “I forced him to come,” Nash, who works for a tech startup, said. “We just wanted to see and be with the UK and be part of the atmosphere.”
But there was no doubting that for many others it was a moment of genuine and deep emotion. The mood was quiet, broken by the occasional cheer as the police officers on the Mall, trying to entertain the crowds, rode their horses up to the barriers.
Amrit Nagy and her mother, Meena, had woken at 5.30am to travel to London from East Ham, the younger woman clutching a candle which she had designed and which she hoped to leave near Buckingham Palace.
They had also attended the funeral of the Queen Mother and the now Prince and Princess of Wales’s royal wedding. Compared with that event, said Amrit, “It’s not as loud, and everyone is more respectful. She appreciated the Queen as “the grandmother of the nation”, she said.
Sarah Merrick had left home in Hampshire early in the morning to secure a spot for her best friend, their children, and their camping chairs. A veteran of the big occasions, Merrick also camped out for the Princess Royal’s wedding in 1972, the Jubilee in 1977, and again for Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981.
She would have slept overnight again for the funeral, but was unable to because of her foster carer responsibilities – she’s planning to make up for it at the King’s coronation, when she will sleep out for two nights, she insisted.
The royals, she said, “offer a lot to this country. I have so much respect. The Queen has been there all my life – it’s weird referring to the King now.” As for the crowd, “People are mostly kind, but there’s a bit of pushing and shoving.”
On Whitehall, too, there was a little anxiety about securing a good viewpoint. “The difficulty is you always think there might be a better view 100 metres away,” said Robert Madeley, who along with his friend Christopher Clowes had come from Leicestershire in full morning dress – “it’s what she would have wanted” – with a box of flapjacks in hand.
Parents lifted their children above the throng of crowds to catch a glimpse, while others sought to keep their tired offspring entertained with iPads and games of Top Trumps. One youngster in need of the toilet asked anxiously: “We’re not going to lose our place, are we Daddy?”
The funeral demanded the largest security operation ever seen in London, and careful marshalling of the crowds. With so many world leaders attending, police had over the weekend gradually extended a secure cordon around Westminster Abbey, meaning the nearest members of the public were several hundred metres away. It meant that the delicate choreography of the arrival of the Queen’s coffin and its slow passage into the abbey was watched only by the cameras, and a handful of media on a temporary wooden stand.
While the service was broadcast on speakers along the route, moving some to tears, others resumed chatting among each other during the service. As the congregation at its close sang the national anthem, the crowds on the Mall joined in – many, notably, singing God Save the Queen, doubtless for the last time.
Marion King had been in high spirits in the morning, celebrating her 59th birthday by camping out with her sister since Saturday. During the service, however, she “cried buckets”. “We were emotional when the children went past in the cars on the way to Westminster and when we listened to the service over the speakers.
“There was not a sound in the two minutes’ silence, you could hear a pin drop over here.”
As the service ended, the crowd outside Buckingham Palace stayed almost silent, waiting for the procession to arrive and speaking only in hushed whispers, while gulls could be heard overhead.
For some of the youngest members of the crowd, however, it had been a very long wait. Several families used the children perched on their shoulders as look-outs for the anticipated moment when the coffin would pass and exchanging tips on how best to spot it. Others with strong enough internet signal followed the TV coverage on their smartphones.
As the gun carriage finally passed, with the King and other family members behind, there was a crush to the barriers, as people stood on chairs and held cameraphones high to capture the moment.
Others were overcome by the emotion of the day. “I can’t speak without crying,” said Paul Denham from Westbury in Wiltshire, who had watched the procession with his wife, Diana. “I am 62 and she’s been there for my whole life, and now she isn’t.”
Diana had struggled to get through “God Save the King,” she said. “My mum died 18 months ago and the Queen reminded me of my mum. They had what we thought were similar smiles.”
After a final, brief ceremony away from the public gaze at Wellington arch, the coffin was lifted from the gun carriage and placed in the state hearse for its final journey to Windsor.
Long after it had departed and the world’s leaders had been transported away in coaches in the manner of a very high-end school trip, 91-year-old Anne van Drimmelen was sitting contentedly in a chair by the front of the Parliament Square barriers, waiting for the crowds to clear.
Having attended the Queen’s coronation and the funeral of her father, George VI, van Drimmelen decided several days ago to travel from her village of Flore in Northamptonshire. “It was something I just wanted to see.”
She had been guarded during her two-day stay by a neighbour from home, Sharon Mayne (“We heard she was going and thought, she can’t go alone”) along with others she met in the queue, while police officers brought the elderly woman cups of tea.
Was the long wait worth it?
“When the gun carriage came out from parliament everyone suddenly went silent,” said Mayne. “You could hear a pin drop. It was a magical experience.”
In Windsor, meanwhile, dense crowds had gathered in the Great Park to witness what the BBC commentator Huw Edwards had referred to several times as the Queen’s journey “home”, to Windsor Castle.
It had been a long wait for many, but as the hearse, led by the Household Cavalry and escorted by members of the Grenadier Guards, turned into the historic, long parade that leads up to the castle, the crowd fell silent. Some applauded, while a great many others filmed the procession, the crowd so dense that many at the back could glimpse the procession only by lifting their phones high on selfie sticks. On its bonnet and roof were flowers that had been thrown by members of the public as it passed.
Jay Gallagher, 47, had travelled from Kettering, Northamptonshire, with his partner and son. Having served for six years as an infanteer in the Royal Anglians 2nd regiment, he referred to the Queen as his “boss”. “She was someone who I have always looked up to,” he said. “I served for her.”
Tep Crowder, 57, from the nearby village of Holyport, said he came to Windsor to see the Queen “for the last time”.
“The values she held make us who we are, she made us Britain,” he said. “She gave us a special place in the world. She showed us how to behave.” Without the Queen, Crowder said, there was a “sense of instability”, adding King Charles had “big shoes to fill”.
For Kirsty Jones, seeing the last part of the public journey had “really felt final”.
Clad with union flags and a toy Paddington bear, she had stayed overnight in a nearby hotel with her husband and their children, Amelia, 11, Hadley, nine, and Hattie, seven, after paying their respects in their home town of Sandringham, Norfolk.
“You do see more when you watch it on the television from home, but I wanted the children to actually be part of it and feel the sadness and the grief that everyone is feeling,” she said.
Her husband added: “It’s about making memories – somebody said on the television this morning that it marks the end of the postwar era – and it does feel like the end of an era.”
As the coffin passed beyond the crowds for the final time and into the grounds of the castle for her private committal service, it was greeted by the Queen’s favourite horse, Emma, while two of her corgis, Sandy and Muick, awaited her arrival at the chapel steps. First, though, it passed through a carpet of flowers, some of the many thousands of bunches that had been left by her subjects as a final mark of affection and respect from them to a cherished and remarkable Queen.
Reporting by: Esther Addley, Aubrey Allegretti, Archie Bland, Emily Dugan, Jamie Grierson, Rachel Hall, Ben Quinn, Emine Sinmaz, Peter Walker
