Solemn reburial at St Martin’s cathedral awaits the last of the Plantagenets after a week of elaborate and protracted ceremonies

The most extraordinary week in Leicester’s history, when huge crowds turned out for the funeral cortege of a man who died more than 500 years ago and then queued for hours to view his coffin, comes to a climax on Thursday with the solemn reburial of the mortal remains of Richard III.

Jeff Ibsen, the brother of Michael Ibsen - whose DNA sample helped to identify the bones discovered underneath a car park, and so was also a 16th great nephew of the last Plantagenet - came from Canada for the ceremonies. “I think it’s time to put the poor guy in the ground,” he said.

People arrived at 4am on Wednesday for the last hours of public viewing of the coffin made by Ibsen and more were still queueing up to the moment the cathedral doors closed to prepare for the reinterment.

Richard III: Battle of Bosworth descendants meet for king's reburial Read more

The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens, will preside over the ceremony, which will be attended by the Countess of Wessex, academics and archaeologists from Leicester and other universities, Phillipa Langley - whose unshakable belief that Richard would be found launched the project - local school children, veterans who have guarded the coffin, newly traced descendants of both sides at the battle of Bosworth Field in which Richard was killed, and members of the public who won their seats through a hugely oversubscribed public ballot.

Thousands more will watch the live transmission on Channel 4, on giant screens of the sort usually set up for major sporting events.

The word “cathedral” may conjure up images of the grandeur of St Paul’s or Westminster. St Martin’s in Leicester’is lovely, but small. In Richard’s day, when he was buried in a roughly dug hole smashed through the tiles of the choir of the Greyfriars church just 100 yards away, it was a comparitively modest parish church.

It only became a cathedral in the 20th century in a move that was intended as temporary until something grander could be built. It is, in the words of Rev Pete Hobson, whose personal and clerical life were upended when he became the project manager for the reinterment, “the second poorest cathedral in England”.

Thousands queue in Leicester to see Richard III's coffin - in pictures Read more

Contributions towards the £2.5m cost of the ceremonies, and the dramatic reordering of the building to make space for the tomb, have come from the diocese, the local authorities, members of the public and donations including £100,000 only last week from the Leicester Tigers football club.

There are said to be 700 journalists from all over the world accredited to cover the reburial, and there isn’t a hotel room to be had for miles around. Shops in the city centre have extended their opening hours, and Richard’s image is everywhere - in pubs, cafes and even a poster in an optician’s window showing him wearing sunglasses. The more devout Ricardians were outraged that one cafe was offering a Plantagenet milkshake.

Richard was buried in 1485, after returning as a stripped corpse slung over the back of a horse to the town he rode out from as a king. Franciscans who were either brave enough to volunteer or sensible enough to obey orders conducted a ceremony “without pomp or solemn funeral”, in the words of a contemporary chronicle.

The last week, with open air services, his emblem projected at night onto the cathedral spire, horse drawn bier, beacons, candles, wreaths, strewn white roses and knights in armour, has more than made up for it. No recent royal, including the Queen Mother, has been buried with such elaborate and protracted ceremonies.

Thousands line Leicester streets for glimpse of Richard III's coffin Read more

The coffin, which will remain above ground for just a few more hours, has been covered with a spectacular embroidered pall in the cathedral.

Underneath the black velvet, the coffin itself was the plainest thing in the week, a rectangular box made by Michael Ibsen out of golden oak from Prince Charles’ forests in the Duchy of Cornwall. Ibsen remembered that Richard’s son, Edward, who died before his 11th birthday, had held the title of Prince of Wales during his short life.

Ibsen was honoured at the remarkable commission to make the coffin, but he is the most quiet and diffident of men. The simple inscription, with the king’s name and dates, was carved by a friend because Ibsen insisted his own lettering was not good enough.

A 15th century wooden coffin would have been a rough thing, for lower status funerals than a king who would usually be buried in sealed lead inside a stone sarcophagus, he explained.

He could not bear to nail his lovely planks together, which would probably have been most historically correct, he said, and instead pegged them with wooden dowels. The lead inner liner which holds the bones weighs 60 kilos, however, and in a moment of panic at the thought of the bottom falling out of the coffin live on television, Ibsen added some screws to the base.

The joints of the coffin are plain, not dovetailed. “To me using dovetails would just have been showing off about me as a cabinet maker,” Ibsen said. “It wouldn’t have been right.”