1st April 1953
TRIBUTES TO QUEEN MARY

Last tributes to Queen Mary were paid throughout the country yesterday, when the funeral took place at Windsor Castle. At the Pontefract Parish Church a memorial service was held at noon. It was attended by the Mayor, Alderman F.D. Leach, wearing his robes and chain of office, and by members of the Corporation, police officers, men of the York and Lancaster Regiment stationed at Pontefract Barracks, and students of the King’s School and the Pontefract and District Girl’s High School. In the congregation were also a number of people in working clothes, including overalls.

The service was conducted by the Vicar of Pontefract, Reverend J. Peel, and the Free Churches in the town also were represented. Appropriate hymns were sung and the choir also sang an anthem, the organist being Mr E.A. Holden. The Vicars of All Saint’s and Carleton with the Methodist Minister of the Methodists also offered prayers.

In a brief address on the text "I will lay me down in peace and take my rest," the Vicar of Pontefract said "With great joy and in proud thanksgiving we commend to God the soul of a greatly beloved Queen." Queen Mary, he added, would leave a memory for most people, either personally or by picture, for she was familiar to most of us. She was of a type different from anyone else - a strong, vivid character, someone we all felt we had known.

He recalled that choristers and their parents who had spent a holiday last summer near Sandringham, came in contact there with Queen Mary – "a lovely, regal figure, the like of which one feels will never see again." They invited her to take tea with them. She was unable to accept, but they received a most gracious and kindly letter from her. The vicar read the letter to the congregation; and went on to say to that Queen Mary fostered the family spirit, which was manifest throughout the Royal Family. They had established close and loving links, which had brought us all nearer together; and we were grateful to her for all she did in that way. She experienced sorrow in her life in the death of her husband and of her two sons, and the abdication of her eldest son, but she endured them publicly and bravely. "Very proudly," he concluded, "we commend her dear soul to God."