Queen’s loyal servants given their chance to bid a fond farewell
Balmoral staff said private goodbye, then six chosen gamekeepers carried coffin to sound of a lone piper
THE journey of Queen Elizabeth II’S coffin began behind closed doors at her favourite place in the world, where some of those closest to her bid the late monarch a private farewell.
Since her death on Thursday, she had lain in the ballroom of Balmoral, where staff, some of whom had served her for decades, had been able to say their goodbyes. To her they were not anonymous servants, as she loved to keep up to date with marriages, births and landmarks in their lives.
Fifty of them worked full time at the 50,000-acre working estate, where grouse moors, Highland cattle, deer and ponies all had to be attended to, as well as the castle itself and around 150 other buildings that required up to 100 parttime staff for their maintenance.
Every detail of the Queen’s funeral arrangements, from the oak coffin she will be buried in to the order of service at Westminster Abbey, was decided by her before her death, so it was telling that she chose six gamekeepers for the honour of carrying her casket on the first few steps of its journey, to the hearse waiting at the entrance portico.
In life, the Queen was woken every day by a bagpiper playing below her window, and in death she was piped out of Balmoral by her piper, Pipe Major Paul Burns, playing Balmoral and Glen Gelder.
The Queen also had a deep connection with the Royal Regiment of Scotland, of which she was Colonel in Chief, and it was the Ballater Royal Guard of Balaklava Company of the Regiment that was given the honour of presenting arms in a royal salute.
Balmoral was where she was truly relaxed: a family home where she could live her most normal life of being a mother, walking her dogs and picnicking among the heather.
The first part of her final journey was a perfect reflection of a woman who was a country girl at heart. Stripped of the heavier trappings of sovereignty, it was nevertheless filled with deeply personal touches that combined the informality of her life in Scotland with the public duties that were never too far distant.
The public got their first glimpse of the late Queen’s coffin at 10.06am, when draped in the Scottish version of the Royal Standard, and simply adorned with seasonal flowers, the oak casket passed through the gates of Balmoral Castle. The wreath included sweet peas, one of the Queen’s favourite flowers, as well as dahlias, phlox and limonium, all cut from the gardens at Balmoral, but it also contained white heather, pine and fir from the moors and the woodlands on the estate where she had loved to roam since she was a girl.
Edinburgh-based funeral directors William Purves had been chosen to transport the Queen’s coffin, and the firm chose a Mercedes hearse with a glass roof and wide single-pane side windows to give the waiting public the best chance of seeing the coffin as it passed them on its long journey by road.
Travelling behind in a burgundy coloured Bentley was her only daughter, Princess Anne, and her husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence. The Princess Royal was chosen by her late mother to accompany her coffin on the six-hour journey from Balmoral to Edinburgh and, tomorrow, on the flight to London. The cortege of six vehicles that followed the Queen’s coffin also included The Rev Kenneth Mackenzie, Minister of Crathie Church near Balmoral, and the Earl of Dalhousie, the Lord Steward of the Royal Household and one of the Queen’s most senior ceremonial officials.
As the cortege drove past the flowercovered verge where members of the Royal family had been in tears reading the public’s messages the day before, it stuck to the 15mph speed limit imposed by Prince Philip, and enforced with a road sign, to protect the red squirrels that live all around.
Special bus services had been laid on to take mourners from Braemar and Ballater to Balmoral itself, and as they stood behind a wooden fence, the first members of the public to see Her Majesty’s coffin, some bowed their heads while others just stared, fixing the image in their memory.
As the cortege crossed the River Dee and turned east towards Aberdeen, there was no clapping, no throwing of flowers, just a quiet, dignified acceptance that the woman who had reigned over them and for almost a century lived among them was leaving Balmoral for the very last time.
‘The first part of her journey was a perfect reflection of a woman who was a country girl at heart’