2,800 beacons will hail Queen’s reign

MORE than 2,800 Platinum Jubilee beacons will be lit across the world in honour of the Queen’s 70-year reign, organisers have revealed as the two-week countdown to the national celebrations begins.

A network of flaming tributes will stretch throughout the UK, with beacons at historic sites including the Tower of London, Windsor Great Park, Hillsborough Castle, Lambeth Palace and the Queen’s estates of Sandringham and Balmoral.

The first beacons on June 2 – the start of the extended Jubilee weekend – are due to be set ablaze thousands of miles away in Tonga and Samoa in the South Pacific, and the final one in the central American country of Belize in the Caribbean.

The principal beacon at Buckingham Palace – a 69ft-high Tree of Trees sculpture for the Queen’s Green Canopy initiative – will be illuminated by a senior royal, who has yet to be revealed, late on the Thursday evening.

As well as traditional beacons organised by charities, community groups, councils and other organisations, creative adaptations of the gesture are being staged to commemorate the monarch’s milestone.

Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust’s sustainable beacon has been made of old and broken hospital beds, which have been melded into a crown-shaped beacon. It will be illuminated in a light display.

Nine central London bridges across the River Thames will be lit up to form the world’s longest public artwork, entitled Illuminated River, with a celebratory sequence of evolving colour and light.

Several English cathedrals – Durham, Ely, Lichfield, Peterborough and Rochester – will be lighting up the night sky red, white and blue, while London’s BT Tower will also be celebrating.