In the mid-20th century, in the winter of 1953, the Queen’s coronation was looming, due to take place the following June.

But there were some logistical issues which needed to be attended to first.

The event, which was due to host more than 8,000 guests, would of course be taking place at Westminster Abbey- which normally only seated around 2,000 people.

The coronation was about to become the event that would make television a mainstream medium, and with the entire nation watching the royal family wasn’t about to be outdone by the small matter of seating logistics.

So, five months before the coronation, the Abbey closed its doors to the public and set about constructing huge tiers of seating in order to ramp up its capacity.


In order to quickly deliver the materials for the major set-up, which consisted of hundreds of tonnes of scaffolding, a temporary railway was built, running into the Abbey.

The train tracks ran through a side door, which is now a tourist entrance, right down the centre of the church, between the pews.

The carriages, piled with construction materials, were pulled in by labourers- perhaps someone drew the line at bringing steam engines into the holy building.

Some photos of the railway’s construction, which remain in the National Archives, show the interior of the Abbey completely decked out with layers of the plywood seating.

The cheap scaffold seating was so high and dense that it covered most of the original Abbey on coronation day, with the top seats practically scraping the rafters- no wonder they disguised it all under fancy-looking carpets and fabrics.

In the end, 20 million people watched the coronation on television, outnumbering the radio audience for the first time- so the smoke and mirrors- and the railway- were all worth it.

