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Auction: 25003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 126

(x) Ticket to the Funeral of Lord Nelson

Ticket to Lord Nelson’s Funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral on 9 January 1806, “Admit the Bearer, at the South Door, to the Galleries in the Great Nave;” signed by G. Lincoln, Dean, with black wax seal of the Bishop of London, minor evidence of residue to left and right edges, small contemporary newspaper clipping entitled ‘Cost of National Funerals’ detailing cost of Nelson’s funeral is glued to reverse

Sold together with a print of ‘The Funeral of Lord Nelson’, published 1815.

Admiral Horatio Nelson’s state funeral was a lavish affair. Prior to the funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral on 9 January 1806, his body lay in state in the Painted Hall of the Greenwich Hospital for three days. His body was held in a wooden coffin fashioned from the main mast of Orient, the French flagship which was destroyed during Nelson’s great victory at the Battle of the Nile. The day before the funeral, his coffin was taken in an elaborate funeral barge from Greenwich in a river procession down the Thames, accompanied by a number of state barges and vessels. It lay overnight in The Admiralty before being taken to St. Paul’s in a grand funeral car, the processional route lined with thousands of onlookers. The funeral at St. Paul’s featured the largest congregation of any state funeral, with purpose-built galleries and the piers decorated with French and Spanish ensigns taken at Trafalgar. There, his body was interred in the crypt in a black sarcophagus where it has laid ever since.



Subject to 5% tax on Hammer Price in addition to 20% VAT on Buyer’s Premium.

Estimate
£800 to £1,200

Starting price
£600