65 years as Queen - 11 facts about Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation

Today marks a historic day for British royalty. On this day 65 years ago Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation ceremony took place.  

Now the longest reigning monarch, the event showed the immense responsibility that she inherited, as demonstrated by the quote:

“Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust”.

Here are 11 facts about Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation:

1. Queen Elizabeth was just 27 years old at the time of her coronation service. Whilst this is young, she is not actually the youngest monarch to start her reign; Mary, Queen of Scots became queen aged just 6 days in 1542!

2. The coronation service occurred at Westminster Abbey with Queen Elizabeth II being the thirty-ninth Sovereign – and the sixth Queen - to be crowned there.

3.Her own ceremony was not the first coronation Queen Elizabeth had attended. At 11 years old she had watched her father King George VI crowned at the very spot she would be crowned just 16 years later.

4. The ceremony itself – lasting almost three hours long – was the first ever coronation to be televised. Broadcast by the BBC, millions of people around the world watched the service and it is largely considered a breakthrough event for the history of broadcasting.

5. 8,251 guests were lucky enough to witness the ceremony at Westminster Abbey.

6. Of those guests, one was Prince Charles. As Elizabeth’s only child to attend his mother’s coronation – Princess Anne was considered too young to attend – he received a special hand-painted children’s invitation to the event.

7. Just like the Royal Wedding of Harry and Meghan a few weeks’ ago, the return route was designed so that the procession could be seen by as many people as possible. It took almost two hours to complete!

8. The procession involved thousands of men from the Royal Navy, Army, RAF and the Commonwealth.

9. The Queen wore her coronation dress a further six times after the ceremony for events such as the Opening of Parliament in New Zealand and Australia.

10. Back in 2013, it was calculated that the Queen had completed 15,000 official engagements in the UK and across the world – a number that will have increased since then.

11. And finally, have you ever wondered where coronation chicken came from? Invented for foreign guests who were to be entertained after the Coronation. The original recipe was invented by florist Constance Spry who won the approval of the Minister of Works.