Fairytale coaches and Rolls Royces housed in the Royal Mews

This edited article about the Royal Mews originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 618 published on 17 November 1973.

Riding in an open carriage, Queen Victoria was an easy target for Edward Oxford in his assassination attempt of 1840, by Clive Uptton

In the Middle Ages, a mews was the place where the king kept his falcons while their plumage was changing.

But now, hunting with falcons is no longer an everyday sport of royalty, and the Royal Mews in London has come to be a fascinating centre of royal transport. Everything from coaches and horses to sledges and Rolls-Royce cars is now kept in the Royal Mews.

The entrance to the Royal Mews is off Buckingham Palace Road, through a Doric archway with a clock tower. The mews is in the shape of a quadrangle, with coaches kept on the east side of the quadrangle and some of the world’s finest stables on the west and north sides. More coach houses are behind the quadrangle, and here are also kept the state and private cars.

This week there is a special hubbub going on in the Royal Mews because of the wedding of Princess Anne to Captain Mark Phillips. On November 14th they will be married in Westminster Abbey, and various coaches will be involved in the following procession.

Princess Anne and Captain Phillips will be following a tradition that other royal brides and grooms have set by riding to Buckingham Palace after the ceremony in the Glass Coach. The coach was built in 1910 by A. Peters and Sons, and since its purchase for King George V’s coronation in 1911, it has been used in nearly all of the royal weddings. The Queen, Princess Margaret, and Princess Alexandra are among those brides who rode in the Glass Coach on their wedding day.

The Glass Coach has also been used for bringing ambassadors to Buckingham Palace for an audience with the Queen, and is usually driven from the box with a pair of grey horses. It is a maroon carriage with blue silk upholstery, and it gets its name from its large glass windows. The Glass Coach has more glass than any of the other royal coaches used on state occasions.

The Royal Mews houses many beautiful coaches. One of the most spectacular is the Gold State Coach, which is gilded all over. At the beginning of George II’s reign, an order from the king for a “very superb” state coach was entered in the journal of the Clerk of the Stables. George II rode in the Gold State Coach for the first time in 1762 when he opened the session of Parliament, and it was recorded as “the most superb and expensive of any ever built in this Kingdom.”

The Gold State Coach has been used for every coronation since George IV’s, and until recently it was customarily used when the sovereign opened Parliament each year. Since World War II, it has only been used for the Queen’s Coronation in 1953.

The Gold State Coach requires eight horses to pull it, and it can only proceed at a walk. All of the other coaches in the Royal Mews can be used at a trot.

Town coaches were once used quite a bit to bring ladies-in-waiting, ambassadors, and other distinguished visitors to Buckingham Palace. The coaches were the royal maroon colour with dark blue hammer cloths, and were drawn by two horses. But in World War II, all the town coaches were disposed of except for one which had been in Windsor a long time. It is known as King Edward VII’s town coach, and is now kept in the Royal Mews.

This was the coach used for the Suite in Attendance on Princess Alexandra’s wedding day, and for Lady Churchill at Sir Winston’s state funeral in 1965.

But probably the most beautiful example of a coach built in this century is the 1902 State Postilion Landau. It was specially built for King Edward VII in 1902 by Hoopers, and he used it for the first time that year for his state drive to the City of London.

The 1902 State Landau is painted a lighter shade of maroon than the other coaches, and it is richly adorned with gold leaf. The upholstery is crimson satin. The Queen uses it regularly to meet foreign heads of state, and it is normally used open, drawn by six grey postilion horses.

A postilion is a man who rides one or more of the horses pulling a carriage in order to guide them and keep them under control. The royal postilions and the royal coachmen each have four different liveries that they wear for various occasions. Some of these and their various accessories are on exhibition in the Royal Mews.

It is interesting to note how the colour of the horses that pull these carriages has changed through the years. Around the time of George II, the dominant colour was dun. Then, for many years, the most famous royal horses were cream-coloured. Black horses were used on official occasions for a couple of years during the 1920s and were soon replaced by bays. Bays are still in use today, but the most famous ones are the Windsor Greys, which draw the Queen’s carriage.