Mourners currently face an 11 hour wait to see Queen Elizabeth lying down.
People wishing to pay their respects to the monarch, have been warned they must be in line by 12.30pm on Monday (19.09.22) in order to enter London’s Westminster Hall before it closes at 6.30am, hours before his funeral.
At 7 a.m. on Friday, September 16, the queue was over 4 miles and those at the back had to wait 11 a.m. to get to the front of the queue, but at some point , hours earlier, the queue had reached 8km, stretching to Southwark Park in Bermondsey, with a waiting time of 14 hours.
Worshipers were admitted to the queue on Monday (12.09.22) before being allowed into Westminster Hall on Wednesday (14.09.22) at 5 p.m., and in the early hours of Thursday morning (15.09. 22), officials decided to form two columns on either side of the queen’s coffin, so that more people might pay their respects to allow the process to go more quickly.
Sisters Rebecca and Sarah Welham traveled from Sevenoaks, Kent, to join the queue around 4am on Friday, along with Rebecca’s five-year-old daughter Sophia.
Rebecca told the Daily Telegraph regarding her daughter: “She went to bed last night and at 4am I woke her up.
“I was ready to go, so I literally had to lift her up and walk straight out the door.
“She’s quite excited, if I can use that word, to see the Queen.
“She understands what happened and she wants to be part of it.”
Nurse Melanie Pickman left her home in Swansea at 11am on Thursday September 15, 22, to queue just before 3pm, but admitted her family thought she was ‘crazy’ for making the trip.
She said: “My sons think I’m crazy because I came to London to stand in line for 30 hours, some say.
“Last night I thought regarding it and made the decision to come first thing in the morning. I just thought I had to come.
“We will never see that once more. She has served our country for so long. We owe it to her to show our respect.
“Look at all those people who came to line up – she made them happy.
“She may be the queen, but she’s also someone’s mother, aunt and grandmother. I just think she’s a part of us too. We were lucky to have her .”
