Custom-made carriage to figure in farewell
A TRIBUTE to the Duke of Edinburgh’s passion for carriage driving will be a poignant feature of today’s funeral, with his last carriage, which he designed, and ponies making an appearance.
The dark green four-wheeled carriage, accompanied by two of Philip’s grooms, will stand in the quadrangle of Windsor Castle today as the Duke’s coffin is carried past in a procession on a Land Rover hearse.
It was Philip’s most recent carriage, which he began using at the age of 91 and had built to his own specifications for riding around Windsor and other royal estates.
It has a clock mounted on brass at the front, inset, which features an inscription commemorating the gift of the timepiece from the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars to mark his 25 years as their Colonel-in-Chief.
With the carriage will be the Duke’s two black Fell ponies – Balmoral Nevis and Notlaw Storm – who were both born in 2008, with the former being bred by the Queen.
The Duke had been synonymous with the sport for years.
In a book he wrote about the sport, he said: “I am getting old, my reactions are getting slower and my memory is unreliable. But I have never lost the sheer pleasure of driving a team through the British countryside.”
Even as an octogenarian he continued to compete in demanding carriagedriving competitions.
He was forced to give up polo at 50 in 1971 due what he called his “dodgy” arthritic wrist and decided to find a new sport to concentrate on. “I suppose I could have left it at that but I have never felt comfortable as a spectator,” he admitted. The Duke, as president of the International Equestrian Federation,
initiated drafting the first international rules for carriage driving in 1968, which sparked an interest in the sport.
In 1971 he went to Budapest to watch the first European championship and then the World Championships in Germany in 1972 to see how the rules were working.
He began his competitive career in 1973 and in 1980 was a member of the victorious British team at the world carriage driving championships at Windsor.
He taught his daughter-inlaw, the Countess of Wessex, and his granddaughter, Lady Louise Windsor, 17, has also taken up the sport.