Coronation of Queen Victoria
1838 coronation of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom.
The coronation of Victoria as queen of the United Kingdom took place on Thursday, 28 June 1838, just over a year after she succeeded to the throne of the United Kingdom at the age of 18. The ceremony was held in Westminster Abbey after a public procession through the streets from Buckingham Palace, to which the Queen returned later as part of a second procession.
Planning for the coronation, led by the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, began at Cabinet level in March 1838. In the face of various objections from numerous parties, the Cabinet announced on Saturday, 7 April, that the coronation would be at the end of the parliamentary session in June. It was budgeted at £70,000 (equivalent to £6,700,000 in 2025), which was more than double the cost of the "cut-price" 1831 coronation, but considerably less than the £240,000 (equivalent to £22,800,000 in 2025) spent when George IV was crowned in July 1821. A key element of the plan was presentation of the event to a wider public.
By 1838, the newly built railways were able to deliver huge numbers of people into London and it has been estimated that some 400,000 visitors arrived to swell the crowds who thronged the streets while the two processions took place and filled the parks where catering and entertainment were provided. Hyde Park was the scene of a huge fair, including a balloon ascent. The fair was scheduled to take place over two days, but was in the end extended by popular demand to four days. Green Park featured a firework display the night after the ceremony.
“Coronation of Queen Victoria” enters the record as 1838 coronation of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Coronation, Queen and Victoria can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15637808. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1838, 2025, 1831 and 1821.
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This entry incorporates text from “Coronation of Queen Victoria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.