On their platinum wedding anniversary, a full celebratory peal will sound from Westminster Abbey, where the 21-year-old future monarch Princess Elizabeth walked up the aisle to marry her dashing Greek and Danish prince in 1947.
At 1pm on Monday November 20, the Abbey’s Company of Ringers will begin a complicated peal consisting of 5,070 changes or sequences, with the 70 a nod to the special anniversary.
It will take the team of 10 ringers around three hours and 20 minutes to complete, as they deliver the tribute without a break.
It is a historic tradition that the Abbey bells are rung for significant royal occasions and anniversaries, and the Queen is the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum wedding anniversary.
The fairy-tale royal wedding was a morale boost in the tough years that followed the Second World War and millions of people tuned in to listen to the ceremony on the wireless.
Royals and dignitaries gathered inside the Abbey, waiting for the young royal bride, whose Norman Hartnell wedding dress was hand-embroidered with more than 10,000 pearls and crystals.
War-time leader Winston Churchill summed up the occasion as “a flash of colour on the hard road we travel”.
For austerity reasons, very little extra seating was provided inside the gothic Abbey, with the number of guests kept to 2,000.
In contrast to later royal weddings, the only flowers in the Abbey were in large vases either side of…
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