Jim Frecklington

Jim Frecklington was born in 1949 in New South Wales and raised near Peak Hill in the Parkes district of central-western farm country. Horses were part of daily life. Family and friends later told the story of an eight-year-old who, blocked by a Shetland pony that would not be ridden, built a small cart instead and put the pony to work towing it. That early habit of solving problems with timber, tools and nerve foreshadowed a career spent rebuilding a craft most of the industrial world had abandoned.

He attended The Scots College in Sydney and graduated in 1968. After school he did not follow a conventional university path into a profession. Instead he took hard outdoor work in the Arctic, operating heavy equipment used to build airstrips, before sailing into the very different world of Windsor Castle and the Royal Mews.

At Windsor Frecklington cared for the Duke of Edinburgh's four-in-hand horses. He later moved to the Royal Mews in London, looking after ceremonial horses, driving carriages on state occasions and serving as an outrider at Ascot. In 1977 he managed Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee Exhibition during its Australian tour and built a replica of Edward VII's 1902 State Landau. In 1988 Australia presented his Australian State Coach to the Queen as an official Bicentennial gift. He then designed and built the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, first used at the 2014 State Opening of Parliament and chosen to carry King Charles III and Queen Camilla to their 2023 coronation. In his last years he directed construction of the Commonwealth Royal Coach for Charles III from his Manly workshop, remortgaging his home to keep the project alive while undergoing cancer treatment.

Frecklington made Manly, on Sydney's northern beaches, his long-term home and workshop base, with earlier coachbuilding work also associated with Dubbo. Former wife Joan Frecklington, speaking from Dubbo in 2023, described his determination to finish a new coach for King Charles despite illness and said he remained in constant contact and never complained. Australians for Constitutional Monarchy later recalled that Frecklington and his wife hosted a private preview of the nearly finished Commonwealth coach in 2025. Friends including Warringah councillor Darren Jones and painter Owen Webb emphasised his forthright manner, perfectionism, and refusal to be impressed with himself.

Frecklington was an avowed monarchist and history lover who believed ceremonial objects should last for centuries. He told interviewers that when he built coaches it took years, and that tradition survived by combining inheritance with invention: gilt silhouettes hiding hydraulic suspension, heating, electric windows and air conditioning. David Flint summarised his working creed with Frecklington's own line: you may as well do something with your life that is going to last. He kept new projects secret when asked, closing workshop shutters rather than spoil a surprise intended for the Crown.

Frecklington was widely described as the world's last royal coachmaker and the first person in more than a century to build major horsedrawn coaches for the British royal family. Two of his completed coaches remain working vehicles of state. The Australian State Coach and Diamond Jubilee State Coach have carried monarchs and senior royals at openings of Parliament, weddings and a coronation. His unfinished Commonwealth Royal Coach, nearly complete at his death, was expected to be finished by his team and delivered to London as a moving tribute to the Commonwealth and more than a thousand years of monarchy. The Australian Governor-General called him an extraordinary craftsman whose work forged a lasting link between Australia and the Crown.

Frecklington received the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 1991 Australia Day Honours for services to carriage building. In 2014 Queen Elizabeth II appointed him a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO), an honour in the personal gift of the sovereign, recognising his service and craftsmanship after the Diamond Jubilee State Coach entered royal use.

Australian and British media repeatedly featured Frecklington ahead of royal events, especially the 2023 coronation, when ABC, Sydney Morning Herald, Telegraph and local Manly coverage explained how a Manly workshop had built the coach carrying the King and Queen to Westminster Abbey. Documentary filming around his later work was reported in 2023. After his death, ABC News, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, The Spectator Australia and royal-news outlets published extended tributes focusing on the coaches as travelling museums and on his Australian bush craftsman manner.

Frecklington died on 11 September 2026 in an aged care facility in Manly after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 76. Owen Webb said the Commonwealth Royal Coach was about 98 percent finished and would be completed for delivery to London. Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace were contacted for comment in contemporary reports. Public tributes stressed both the unfinished coach and the lasting presence of his earlier carriages in the Royal Mews.