Ben Lowry at coronation: Belfast girl singers were at the heart of a musical tour de force in Westminster Abbey

(Scroll down for links to Ben Lowry writing about almost being late for the service and his other reports from London)

From where we journalists were sitting in the North Transept, our view of proceedings often obscured by the wall around the choir stalls, the musical aspect to the ceremony was particularly striking. And at the very heart of it were seven young people from Northern Ireland. Viewers around the world might have wondered if these girls among the singers, so striking in their blue uniforms, were from some school in the English shires with ancient royal connections. But, no, they are members of the Methodist College Belfast Chapel Choir, which had been invited to provide girl choristers to sing with the choirs of Westminster Abbey and HM Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace.

At the most dramatic moments in a service that was a musical tour de force, the seven pupils were at the centre of the singing – for example during the anointing, when the choir sang in English, Welsh, Gaelic and Irish. They were singing Handel's dramatic ‘Zadok the Priest’ when the King was divested of the Robe of State behind an anointing screen. And they helped sing some of the beautiful, and specially composed, modern music such as the partly Irish Tarik O'Regan's ‘Agnus Dei’.

From the press seating, behind those ancient stone barriers, the voices of the choristers seemed to rise magically to the very heights of the abbey.

One of those who emerged enchanted from the music and the service was Jayne Brady, head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. She was there in her capacity as the province’s top administrator, but also had the extra pleasure of having a special link to the ceremony – her niece was one of the Methody singers, Nia Phelan, who is aged 17. Ms Brady thought the ceremony “absolutely fantastic”, and she “loved it”.

“It was amazing, a moment in time really.”

The girls, Emily Wilson, Hannah Harvey, Evie Mills, Sarah Johnston, Maggie Gilmartin, Hannah Gheel and Nia, attend a school with a high musical reputation. They were chosen by audition, which is little wonder given that they were performing with some of the most talented musicians in the world.

Viewers can’t fail to have noticed the moving Ascension gospel choir, singing ‘Allelulia, Allelulia’ composed by Debbie Wiseman for the coronation. I can only say it sounded divine in the abbey, where from our seats we had the joy of hearing the singers nearby, and occasionally if we craned our necks just seeing their bobbing heads over towards the altar. The Byzantine Chant Ensemble, a display of Greek Orthodox music performed “at the request of His Majesty, in tribute to his late father His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” was similarly stunning when heard in the abbey – and no doubt stunning on TV too. These touches, which like the appearance of Belfast schoolgirls weret outside of tradition, were all done with impeccable taste and added to the memorable coronation service.

It was a long service, which went almost exactly to its two-hour schedule and which had a global feel, yet Northern Ireland seemed woven all the way through the fabric of the occasion. As was religion, of course – and both came together when the Most Rev John McDowell, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, brought the Orb from the altar to place it in the king's right hand. As the Archbishop of Canterbury Most Rev Justin Welby’s words pointed out, even earthly kings are subject to a higher order.

The three main Northern Ireland church leaders were prominent in the procession of faith leaders into the abbey: the president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Rev David Nixon, the Presbyterian moderator, the Right Rev Dr John Kirkpatrick, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Most Rev Dr Eamon Martin, and the Anglican Primate of all Ireland, Archbishop McDowell.

Before the coronation got under way one of the latter’s predecessors, the former Church of Ireland primate Lord Eames, was part of the procession of the King and the Queen, as was Dame Mary Petters. Only 24 peers got a seat in the service out of more than 600 of them, and three of them were from Northern Ireland: Lords Dodds and Rogan and Baroness Hoey.