World News for Students of English

06-03-2023 07:00

Britain’s coronation throne is getting a revamp ahead of King Charles’s crowning on May 6.

The Coronation Chair’s believed to be around 700 years old, and many monarchs, including King Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, and Charles’s own mother Elizabeth II, have been crowned on it. The chair is the oldest surviving piece of furniture still used for its original purpose which makes it incredibly rare.

The throne was made on the orders of King Edward I in 1296 to include the Stone of Destiny which had been used for the coronation of Scottish kings for centuries and had been brought down from Scotland.

The oak chair was originally covered in gold leaf gilding and decorated with colored glass; however, over the years, it’s suffered damage from ordinary use. It’s extremely fragile, and the gilding layers on it often flake off. It’s been used for every coronation of an English monarch with a few exceptions since then.

Difficult words: revamp (improving the structure or appearance of something), coronation (the ceremony at which a person is made a king or queen), gilding (the process of applying gold leaf or gold paint).

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