Thousands join Queen for Cathedral celebration

Royal Visit - 13 August 1987

The Queen visited Orkney to set a Royal seal of approval on a year of celebrations marking the 850^th anniversary of St Magnus Cathedral.

The centrepiece of a busy day was the unveiling of a stunning new stained glass window in the west wing of the Cathedral.

The Orcadian reported: “Despite the packed programme, the Queen was never more relaxed and made time for the informal moments – the youngsters who wanted to say it with flowers – as well as the formal engagements which took her to the Town Hall, the harbour authority building and the Royal Naval Auxiliary Headquarters at Scapa.”

People began congregating in Broad Street at 9am, almost two hours before the Queen arrived at Kirkwall Airport.

In Broad Street, she stepped from a metallic blue Rolls Royce bearing the Royal Standard wearing a red coat with matching dress and hat. “The precise colour of her outfit was one of the talking points of the day,” the paper reported. “It was officially described as ‘crushed raspberry’ or ‘cerise’, though one observer thought ‘fuchsia’ was closer.

On the Cathedral steps, under the specially commissioned stained glass window, the Lord Lieutenant, Colonel Robert Macrae, presented Cathedral Minister, the Rev Bill Cant, to the Queen, Inside, almost 800 people were present for the unveiling ceremony, performed at the end of the Sunday morning service. The Minister said it was a ‘great honour’ to have the Queen with them.

The window was created by the Scottish artist Crear McCartney, who was asked by the Royal visitor about the inspiration for the work, which took a year-and-a-half to complete. He recalled: “I was looking through the west window when the mist suddenly lifted and the sunshine streamed through giving a sunburst effect. That was the moment the idea of a stained glass window came to me.”

Before leaving the Cathedral, the Queen was presented with an Orkney chair created by Peter Foulis, from Kirkwall, and Edwin Tait, from Toab, as a gift from the Friends of St Magnus.

Outside, the crowd in Broad Street now numbered over 2,000 people, with 28 children representing all of Orkney’s primary schools lining the red carpet as the Queen left the Cathedral.

Each of the children carried a stone tied in string. “The Queen watched with considerable interest as the children presented their stones, which are to be used for a new font for the Cathedral,” the Orcadian reported. “The children bowed, then retired, leaving the stones at the Queen’s feet, where lay a wooden casket – representing the casket which had carried the bones of St Magnus from the site of his murder on Egilsay in 1117.”

The Queen, ‘looking radiant and relaxed’. then walked through an avenue of children, accepting posies of flowers on the way. After lunch at the Town Hall, the Queen’s Rolls Royce and a cavalcade of cars headed for Scapa, where an array of brightly coloured yachts had been joined by a tanker bedecked in bunting.

At the harbour authority HQ, the Queen switched on a new £250,000 marine surveillance system, which would provide an up-to-the-minute picture of shipping in the Pentland Firth and the approaches to Scapa Flow. The Queen pinpointed on a chart the Castle of Mey, where she had spent the previous night, and commented on the Flotta flare which she had seen glowing from the castle.

The Queen made her way by foot to her next engagement at the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service HQ. Here history was made – her first visit to a RNXS unit anywhere in Britain. Before leaving she was presented with a glass paperweight bearing the RNXS crest. “A very useful gift,” the Royal visitor declared.

Next came an impressive selection of equestrian events organised by the Pony Club and Riding Club on the sands at Scapa.

These included a demonstration of South Ronaldsay’s Festival of the Horse and Boys’ Ploughing Match. The Orcadian described how the Queen talked to some of the horses – girls aged from three to 12 ‘dressed in dazzling finery’ – and asked if their outfits were handed down from generation to generation. Seventeen young ploughmen, ranging from five to 15-years-old, then drew straight lines in the Scapa sands using their miniature ploughs.

Teams of Clydesdale horses added to the spectacle as 50 horses and riders from the Pony Club and Riding Club took part in a variety of events, including a pageant telling the story of Orkney through the ages.

“In the midst of the horses and children, the Queen’s schedule was forgotten as, smiling, involved and relaxed, she charmed all around her,” the Orcadian reported.

“As the Queen concluded her final engagement at Scapa, the spectators responded to a spontaneous cry of ‘three cheers for the Queen’, prompting her lady-in-waiting Lady Fermoy to sum up the success of the visit: ‘What a lovely day it has been.’”