Late Queen’s dresser didn’t want pony to wear Her Majesty’s headscarf at funeral
Elizabeth II’s dresser did not want the monarch’s headscarf to be worn by her favourite pony during her funeral procession, it has emerged.
Angela Kelly, who worked for the late Queen for more than 25 years and became one of her closest confidants, initially refused to hand over one of her treasured silk scarves, it is claimed.
Terry Pendry, who worked as the monarch’s stud groom for more than 30 years, was determined to pay a special tribute to his late boss. He wanted to reflect the many hours she spent riding her beloved fell pony, Carltonlima Emma, while wrapped in one of her favourite scarves.
Having been invited, with his wife Sue, to attend the committal service inside St.George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle in September 2022, he devised a secret plan to stand with the pony, known as Emma, beforehand on the Long Walk so they could pay their respects as the coffin came past.
However, he had to confide in one person, Ms Kelly, as he needed her permission to place the late Queen’s favourite Hermes headscarf on Emma’s white sheepskin saddle.
Mr Pendry, 74, recalled their conversation on the Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth podcast, which was released on Friday.
Asked whose idea it was to take Emma to the funeral procession, he said: “My own. I was actually invited to go to Her Majesty’s funeral at Westminster. And I said ‘And Sue?’
“[They replied] ‘No, no, no, just you’. I said ‘Sue and I we’re a team. I’ll be here for when she [the Queen] comes home for the committal’, always knowing what I was going to do.
“As regards Emma and myself, I didn’t dare tell anybody because maybe they’d have tried to stop me doing it. I wasn’t going to have any of that.”
Mr Pendry went on: “So I took it upon myself, I went to Angela Kelly and I said, ‘I need one of the Queen’s scarves’. She didn’t want me to have it.
“She said: ‘Well no, you can’t, you mustn’t’.
“I said ‘I’m going to and I will. You have to give me one of her headscarves, I need to pay my last respects with Emma’.
“Anyway, she caved in and she gave me the Hermes scarf that was one of her [the Queen’s] favourites.”
Mr Pendry added: “I had to work out how, once Her Majesty’s coffin had passed me, how I was going to hand Emma over, and get round the moat garden into the castle to the chapel, before she [the Queen] did.
“It was our last race if you like. Anyway, I managed to get there in good time.”
Design called The Royal Mews
The sight of Mr Pendry bowing his head as the state hearse passed by, Emma standing quietly by his side, became one of the enduring images of the day.
The black fell pony was dressed in a black riding blanket adorned with the Queen’s cipher, the headscarf draped across her saddle. Elizabeth II had previously been photographed wearing the scarf while riding Emma through Great Windsor Park.
The 1993 Hermes design, called The Royal Mews in honour of Buckingham Palace’s stables, featured the building that had housed the Queen’s horses since 1820, as well as five different royal carriages and the Queen’s equerry. It was presented to her at the 1993 Windsor Horse Show, one of her favourite events.
Mr Pendry was close to the Queen, riding with her on an almost daily basis and looking after all her private horses and ponies in Windsor.
As she became increasingly frail in her late 70s, he arranged for her to switch from riding her horse Sanction to a smaller fell pony and she went on to ride Emma until just two months before her death, aged 96.
Mr Pendry said in 2020 that the pony had been “a wonderful servant to Her Majesty”.
