A Very British Farewell: The Queen’s Lying-in-State Queue in Pictures

On 14 September, Queen Elizabeth II made her way from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament for the final time, in a horse-drawn gun carriage, and it was there that the period of lying-in-state began. From 5 p.m. on Wednesday until 6.30 a.m. on Monday, September 19—the day of her state funeral—visitors from across the UK and around the world will be able to file past her coffin at all hours of the day and night, and bid farewell to the longest-serving monarch in British history.

A queue began to form in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and by that afternoon, it stretched from Lambeth Bridge to the London Eye, past the Southbank Centre, National Theatre, Tate Modern, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and Borough Market to London Bridge. In the coming days, it’s expected to extend all the way to Southwark Park, a distance of over seven kilometers which would take an hour and a half to walk in ordinary circumstances. By Thursday morning, mourners were being warned that it could take as long as 30 hours for them to reach the end of the line, but few were deterred—according to The Times, officials had assumed that 750,000 people would descend on the capital to pay their respects, but now it seems that number could be surpassed.

What is astonishing, however, is the orderliness—and the striking Britishness—of this expansive operation: the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has created a tracker to mark the queue’s current endpoint; stewards are in place to hand out wristbands; there are water bottle filling stations as well as designated public toilets and baby-changing facilities en route; and the mood is remarkably serene, as well-wishers swap stories, pausing briefly to be interviewed by the scores of reporters making their way down the line.

As the queue continues to grow, and #TheQueue continues to trend on social media, view the best photos from this historic event, below.