Princess Mary’s Wedding in 1922
Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles on the balcony at Buckingham Palace with King George V and Queen Mary
In Part I, I wrote about HRH Princess Mary’s wedding at Westminster Abbey in 1922 and talked about Mary’s connections with Goldsborough Hall. But as the Royal Wedding of 2011 fast approaches, what about the all important do afterwards?
Over 1,900 guests have been invited to attend Kate and William’s ceremony at Westminster Abbey, which is a huge amount by anyone’s standards. Back in the 1920s, Mary had a somewhat more modest celebration – a lunch at Buck House for just 170 friends and family.
An amazing 900lb wedding cake
Princess Mary's Wedding Cake
Kate and Wills are plumping for a rather traditional “multi-tiered fruit cake” with a floral design, but are, at least, having something a bit more yummy with a chocolate rich-tea biscuit cake to follow, one of William’s childhood favourites.
On the cake front, Mary wins hands down. She had no fewer than eight wedding cakes including an 8ft cake weighing 900lb made by Kemp’s of London with 50 miniature electric light bulbs. (These may have been all the rage in the Twenties but it sounds a bit “gypsy” to me.) It took 12 men and three cars to deliver it. In true military style, Princess Mary used her new hubby’s sword to cut one of the cakes.
How the wedding news went round the world
Kate and William’s wedding ‘I dos’ are going to be sold on iTunes within seconds. This would have unthinkable back in the 1920s. However, the wonderfully titled Daily Sketch described how its copy and pictures were filed that day. Photographs of the wedding were sent by specially chartered aeroplanes and were in Manchester by 4pm the same day for simultaneous printing with London. Two fast DH9 machines were chartered from De Havilland and despite a strong westerly wind all the day, the first pilot landed in Manchester just after 1 hour and 55 minutes for the 180 mile journey – about the same time it takes Flybe today… Over 3 million copies of the newspaper were sold the following day.
What do you give a Royal couple?
Most members of the Royal Family gave stunning jewellery and Viscount Lascelles was no exception. He gave Mary a superb necklace of big diamonds, surrounding beautiful sapphires.
Some rather more unusual gifts included
• A jewelled gold shield from the Tsar
• A pipe from three bus drivers
• A gold opium pipe from the Sultan of Turkey
• A cigarette holder from 10 street newspaper sellers
• A whip from 5 hansom cab drivers
• Over 1,000 silver teapots and 1400 cruet sets.
People round the country gave gifts and here at Goldsborough Hall we still have the sundial given to the couple by the people of Horton in Oxfordshire, the copse of cherry trees given to Princess Mary by the Emperor of Japan and some very fine stained glass windows given by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Honeymoon?
Kate and Wills are spoilt for choice for their honeymoon and your guess is as good as mine as to where they are going to go. Back in the 1920s, this royal couple headed by train from Paddington to Shifnal in Shropshire that same evening to stay at Weston Park, the Staffordshire seat of the Earl of Bradford who were relations of Lord Lascelles on his mother’s side. The railway platforms, embankments and works alongside the railway were covered with people waving and cheering and the enthusiasm along the route was said to be “simply indescribable”. Every window, garden, bridge or road were filled with cheering people.
From all of us at Goldsborough Hall, we wish William and Kate a great day on 29th April and a happy life as a couple together. And if we’re not chosen as their honeymoon destination, we hope they’ll come to visit on one of our romantic spring breaks. Goldsborough Hall is a unique and exclusive venue for that very private getaway!
