LONDON – Queen Elizabeth II’s oak coffin will embark on a week-long journey on Sunday from the dining room at Balmoral Castle, her summer retreat in the Scottish Highlands, to Westminster Abbey.
The queen’s funeral will be held on September 19, the palace announced on Saturday.
On Sunday, six custodians from the grounds will load the coffin into a hearse, which will carry it on a six-hour journey through Aberdeen to Edinburgh, where an honor guard will receive it at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the official residence of the sovereign in Scotland.
From there, it will be conveyed Monday on the Royal Mile, a major route through Edinburgh’s Old Town, to St. Giles, where there will be ceremonies and vigils. King Charles III and Queen Camilla will be part of that procession, with some members of the royal family following behind the coffin and others in vehicles.
The Queen, who died on Thursday, will lie in state in Edinburgh until Tuesday afternoon, when her coffin will be flown to a Royal Air Force jet, which will transport it to the royal residence. Northolt Air Force Base in west London. It will be loaded into a state hearse and driven to Buckingham Palace, arriving at 8pm, when it will be placed on a truss in the ballroom.
At 2:22 p.m. Wednesday, the queen’s coffin, now adorned with royal crowns and a wreath, will be delivered by gun carriage in a quiet procession from Buckingham Palace, through Central shopping center and past the Parade of the Guards, making the way to Westminster Hall in the Palace of Westminster.
Following the blessing of the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the queen will lie still at Westminster Hall for four days until the morning of September 19, when her coffin will be moved again for the funeral on the same day. there, at 11 a.m., near Westminster Abbey.
Buckingham Palace declined to estimate how many people might have passed through her coffin during that period, although based on other funerals for members of the royal family the number could be in the tens, even even hundreds of thousands.
