Princess Diana's time capsule buried at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has now been opened 30 years later with the 10 items inside finally revealed.
Now, it was actually meant to be opened centuries after it was stowed away, but due to new construction on the children's clinic necessitating the demolition of the wall where it was placed, the hospital has chosen to open it now.
While Diana oversaw the capsule, the various items inside it were actually chosen by two children, Sylvia Foulkes and David Watson, who won a contest on the popular children's TV show Blue Peter.
They were asked to select the items that represented life in the 1990s.
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Diana, who became the president of GOSH in 1989 and regularly visited the specialist children’s hospital, buried the container as part of a ceremony in March 1991 there to mark the laying of the foundation stone of the Variety Club Building, which she opened later in 1994.
The ceremony mirrored one in 1872 where the then-Princess of Wales, Alexandra, laid the foundation stone of the older hospital building and sealed a time capsule, which has never been found.
Staff at the hospital, either born in 1991 or already working at the hospital in 1991, helped to remove Diana’s capsule.
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What was in Princess Diana's 1991 time capsule?
- A CD of Kylie Minogue's Rhythm of Love album
- A solar-powered calculator
- A pocket television
- Five tree seeds
- A snowflake hologram
- A passport
- A collection of British coins
- A copy of the Times newspaper - from the date of the capsule's burial
- A piece of recycled paper
- A photo of Princess Diana
Janet Holmes, senior health play specialist, who was working at GOSH in 1991, shared her favourite item from the capsule: “It brought back so many memories seeing the pocket TV in there.
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"I had bought one for my husband back in the day, for when he had a break whilst driving his coach around the country. They were very expensive then!"
Jason Dawson, executive director of Space and Place at GOSH, oversaw the removal and opening of the capsule.
He told The Times doing so was 'really quite moving... almost like connecting with memories of things that have been planted by a generation gone by'.
"There were some really odd things in there that you would have thought at the time were [at the] cutting edge of technology, such as the pocket calculator and pocket TV. When you look at them now, they almost look like toys," he said. "We had no technology to even try to play the CD on."
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"I have no doubt that if Diana was still with us, she would still be connected with us in some way," Dawson added. "She really was a signifier of something special."
Topics: Princess Diana, Royal Family, UK News
Rhiannon Ingle