An Ipswich vicar has shared the bonds he made within the queue to Westminster Hall during a 14-hour wait to pay his respects to the Queen on behalf of Ipswich.
Reverend Tom Mumford, vicar of St Mary le Tower, is among the thousands who have visited her late Majesty’s coffin as she lies in state.
He finally arrived at the front of the queue shortly after midnight on Friday, September 16.
The experience, said Revd Mumford, has been “surreal”.
“I’d gone there, expecting to be joining a queue, but what it felt like was more like a pilgrimage,” he explained.
“It was as much about the journey as the destination.”
He came across people from all over the world.
“After a few hours, the queue solidified and you got to know the people around you. I was lucky enough to meet an amazing group of people, and we all committed that we would stay together to the end.
“It was a really diverse group. There were people from as far away as Morocco and Germany, but then as near as Kent and Dorset.
“People all came for totally different reasons, but we all formed a real bond. It was like having a little family for the day.”
Finally standing before the Queen’s coffin at midnight, Revd Mumford said the only way to describe the feeling was “profoundly moving.”
“All I could do was to take it in, and to say a prayer of thanksgiving for the Queen’s service to the country, but also her witness as a Christian, her profound faith and that being an inspiration for my own ministry and vocation as a Christian.”
When the Queen died, Revd Mumford had not initially been planning on travelling to London.
“Because the response of the town had been so enormous, I was really focused on ministry in Ipswich,” he said.
“But, as time went on, I felt that I wanted to do something in a personal capacity as well as a vicar.
“There were a lot of people in my congregation who really wanted to go, but were unable to, either because they were at work or school or they were too frail.
“So, I was in part doing it for them as well.”
Revd Mumford arrived back in Suffolk at 3:30am on Saturday morning.
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