On the last day of her 52nd year as monarch, The Queen left Sandringham House for Norwich in order to carry out engagements at a local hospital and archive centre.
Fifty two years ago to the day, Princess Elizabeth and her husband were in the middle of a Commonwealth tour and were staying at the Sagana Lodge in Kenya, a wedding present which had been given to them in 1947. Only a few hours later, the news came through that King George VI had died in his sleep and that the young Princess was now Queen.
The tour, which would have taken the Royal couple to Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand, was immediately cancelled and The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh returned home to London. The Royal party arrived on 7 February and The Queen was met at the airport by the Prime Minister of the day, Winston Churchill. The official proclamation came the following day.
The Queen traditionally carries out engagements in Norfolk on the day prior to Accession Day, but very rarely carries out engagements on the day itself, although in her Golden Jubilee year, she opened the Macmillan Centre at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn. This year, Her Majesty visited Norwich to open the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and the Norfolk Archive Centre.
The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital is the newest teaching hospital in the country and the largest single-build hospital ever to be built in the country. The hospital trust treats more than 500,000 patients a year and employs more than 5,200 staff. The 989-bed hospital first opened to patients in November 2001 and replaced the former Norfolk and Norwich and West Norwich hospitals. The moves from the two old hospitals to NNUH were completed in January 2003.
Hospital chief executive Stephen Day commented: "The hospitals we moved from had long and happy associations with the Royal Family and we are delighted that tradition will continue with The Queen's visit to officially open Norfolk's newest hospital."
During her tour of the hospital, The Queen was shown the X-ray room and radiology department and watched the process of X-rays being taken and added to an online medical record. She was then taken to the Holt ward and met with staff and patients, before meeting partners and supporters of the hospital in the East Atrium and unveiling a plaque.
At the Norfolk Archive Centre, The Queen was shown a short film detailing its history before touring the film archive and meeting staff whose job it is to copy and restore film. Her Majesty also saw some of Norfolk's priceless collections of ancient records, including the fifteenth-century Broadland Swan Roll, a vellum roll of 5 skins containing a pictorial and written register of the ownership marks of swans of the Broadland area of Norfolk at the turn of the 15th century.
The Queen then officially opened the new centre by unveiling a plaque. The £6.7 million Archive Centre is Western Europe's most advanced archive facility and houses more than 12 million historical documents, sound and film archives. It is home to the Norfolk Record Office, the East Anglian Film Archive and the new Norfolk Sound Archive and represents a partnership between Norfolk County Council, the University of East Anglia and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
David Cleveland, Director of the East Anglian Film Archive, commented: "Our staff and students are delighted that The Queen will be visiting. This is the first royal visit to a regional film archive and demonstrates the significance of moving image collections in the region."
The Queen is now the fourth longest reigning monarch in British history. Only Queen Victoria, King George III, King James VI and I and King Henry III had longer reigns.
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