SYDNEY: As birthday gifts go, a horse-drawn carriage covered in gold leaf, adorned with diamonds and sapphires and topped with a crown made of timber from Lord Nelson’s flagship is hard to beat.
So the fact that the gift from Australia was not completed in time for the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II as intended passed without much comment.
As the monarch nears her 82nd birthday, the State Coach Brittannia is finally close to being shipped to London, and its creator Jim Frecklington couldn’t be happier.
The former real estate agent has mortgaged his house and spent more than three years designing and building the 2.5-tonne carriage which he intends the royal household to use for centuries to come.
Frecklington, a monarchist to his boot straps, has vowed to make this the most historic of all the queen’s carriages.
The Britannia will hold relics from buildings, boats and other articles linked to Britain including timber from King Henry VIII’s Mary Rose, a fragment of the biblical Stone of Destiny or Scone, and a chunk of the door frame of the prime minister’s Downing Street residence.
“I thought, ‘How can I make something that’s brand new? That has as much history as all the old coaches?” Frecklington said.
“And how I do that, I incorporate all sorts of historic timber, like the crown on the roof is timber from Lord Nelson’s ship the Victory. That crown has been to the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.”
Frecklington, who estimates he has spent about $1.5 million building the coach, hopes to include 90-100 pieces of historic material in the vehicle.
“I have metal from a Spitfire that flew across the English Channel on D-Day, I also have parts of a Hurricane that took part in the Battle of Britain, and I have parts of a Lancaster that took part in the Dambuster raids,” he said.
“I’ve also got all sorts of other things there — I’ve got parts of Captain Cook’s ship the Endeavour, we’ve also got some of the Mayflower that took the pilgrims to America in 1620.”The oldest item is a piece of the Ferriby boat, believed to be the oldest boat in Europe, which dates from about 1800 BC.
The Britannia is the second carriage Frecklington — who as a young man worked as a horse handler at Buckingham Palace — has built for the queen. His first, the Australia State Coach, was given to the monarch in 1988 and is regularly used when the queen opens parliament.
“The reason it is far more difficult is to incorporate all this material,” he explains. Acquiring such artefacts can take years of patient letter writing to the relevant historical or maintenance authorities. Also painstaking is the sourcing of artisans to work on the details of the carriage.
The coach’s four lamps include crystal specially blown in Scotland, the interior is upholstered in a silk custom-made in England while the gold door-handles, each encrusted with 24 diamonds and 130 sapphires, are from New Zealand.
Frecklington has incorporated modern elements into the carriage — it is air-conditioned, the wheels are aluminium instead of wood and six hydraulic stabilisers are used to keep it stable.
The coach has not been without controversy — the Australian government has given $245,000 towards its construction and has agreed to pay for it to be flown to London.
In May, opposition Labour Senator John Faulkner said the government “couldn’t care less it was going to pay up to $350,000 for an 80th birthday present for the queen ... and didn’t give a damn whether she got it when she was 90”.
Frecklington is not bothered, saying the queen can do as she wishes with the gift which he believes should be seen as a work of art.
“Art gallery pieces will only tell you one story,” he said. “Whereas this coach is a time capsule which will tell you approximately 100 stories.”—AFP
