The Prince and Princess of Wales are to mark the first anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s death with a small private service in Wales.
William and Kate will attend St Davids Cathedral in St Davids, the smallest city in Britain, in Pembrokeshire on Friday – exactly a year since the nation’s longest-reining monarch died peacefully of old age at 96.
St Davids has been a site of pilgrimage and worship for more than 1,400 years, since St David – the patron saint of Wales – settled there with his monastic community in the sixth century.
Since the Reformation, one of the quire stalls has been in the possession of the Crown and is known as the Sovereign’s Stall.
This makes St Davids the only UK cathedral where the sovereign has a special stall in the quire among members of the chapter, the governing body of the cathedral.
Elizabeth II was the first monarch to visit St Davids Cathedral since the Reformation when she arrived at the site with her husband, the late Duke of Edinburgh, during a royal tour to Wales in August 1955 following her coronation.
She sat in the special stall then, and on three subsequent occasions during her visits to the cathedral – which dates from 1181 and welcomes around 300,000 visitors annually – over the years.
St Davids has officially been a city since 1995, when Elizabeth II presented the-then town council with letters patent elevating it to the status of a full city council during a ceremony at the cathedral.
In 1982, the late Queen performed the Maundy money ceremony – in which the monarch distributes money to pensioners to commemorate Jesus washing the feet of the Apostles at the Last Supper – at St Davids Cathedral.
On Friday, William and Kate will join a short private service which will include a commemoration of the late Queen’s life.
They will then meet members of the local community in the adjacent cloister, including local people who met Elizabeth II during her visits to St Davids.
