As part of Salisbury Cathedral’s celebrations for the first Coronation most people have ever experienced, Veronica Turner, a flower arranger at the cathedral and the great-niece of the Viscountess Harberton Fairlie Harmar, pulled out the robe the Viscountess wore to the 1937 Coronation of King George VI.

The robe features two-and-a-half rows of ermine spots on the back, indicating that the wearer is a viscountess. Her husband, the Viscount of Harberton Ernest Pomeroy, would have had three rows.

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Veronica, who lives in The Close, also brought several documents, including the invitation to the Coronation and a humorous letter written by her father’s then-teenage cousin, Christopher Cowlard, who got the day off from Eton to attend and said he became so irritated with his aunt, Lettice D’Oyly Walters, anti-Coronation moaning that he wanted to "jump into the Thames".

The Viscountess Harberton was a painter. According to family lore, she hid some paper in the robe she wore to the coronation so she could make sketches for a painting of the event later.

Veronica said: “The family story is that she—she was an imminent artist, very accomplished—so she took a sketchbook into the abbey. We think she stuffed it down her chest (she was obviously very thin) and then she sketched away and then she produced a big oil painting, which is now in the royal collection.”