Cambridge is no stranger to a royal celebration and the sheer scale of some has been remarkable

With arrangements for this month’s royal wedding well underway, valued Friend of the Museum Tamsin Wimhurst takes us back 180 years to the preparations for another major royal event: the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Victoria on 28 June 1838.

Conscious that this was to be event of a lifetime, the great and the good of Cambridge conceived of a celebration that would involve more than 20,000 townspeople. They had ambition, they had enthusiasm and they knew how to plan and organise. All they had to do was to unveil their spectacular scheme and keep their fingers crossed that the unpredictable English weather would be kind to them.

Send Her Victorious compliments our current exhibition A Loyal Toast.

This talk is part of Tracing Traditions, a project funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund and delivered by the Museums Association