Cheering crowds greeted King Charles III on Tuesday in Northern Ireland on his tour of the four parts of the United Kingdom.
Hundreds of people lined the street leading to Hillsborough Castle near Belfast, the royal family’s official residence in Northern Ireland, in the latest outpouring of affection following Queen Elizabeth II’s death on Sept. 8. The area in front of the gates to the castle was carpeted with hundreds of floral tributes.
Britain's King Charles III and the Queen Consort meet wellwishers outside Hillsborough Castle, Belfast, Sept. 13, 2022. Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein politician who is speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, said the queen had “demonstrated how individual acts of positive leadership can help break down barriers and encourage reconciliation.”
He said he would draw on his mother’s “shining example” and “seek the welfare of all the inhabitants of Northern Ireland.”On the Falls Road in Belfast, a nationalist stronghold, several walls are decorated with murals of Bobby Sands, an IRA member who died while on a hunger strike in prison in 1981, and others killed in the Troubles.
On Monday night, Charles and siblings Anne, Andrew and Edward briefly stood vigil around their mother’s flag-draped coffin in St. Giles Cathedral as members of the public filed past.