A Childhood In Norfolk

Diana Spencer was born at 7.45 pm on the warm summer evening of July 1st 1961. Her birth took place in the bow-fronted bedroom of Park House on the Sandringham estate where her mother had been born before her.

She was the third girl of Frances and Johnnie Althorp, heir to the Spencer earldom and though her birth was of course cause for celebration, it was tempered by some minor disappointment in that she was not a boy and therefore could not be the heir to the Spencer name that her parents desperately wanted. That issue was sorted in due course when a fourth child, Charles, came along in May of 1964, giving Diana a brother to whom she would become very close.

Diana’s father’s family, the Spencers, was one of the most aristocratic in England, and her extraordinary bloodline contained many Kings and high-ranking Royals. It also made her an eleventh cousin to Prince Charles, heir to the British throne.

Her birthplace, Park House, was in fact the property of the Queen and had been leased to Diana’s maternal grandfather, Maurice Fermoy, in 1931 by King George V. Her Majesty’s own main dwelling at Sandringham was just half a mile away.

The Spencer family estate was Althorp in Northampton shire, but Diana rarely went there as a child because her father Johnnie (Viscount Althorp) did not get on very well with his father, Jack Spencer, the 7th Earl.

Instead she spent most of her childhood in rural north Norfolk, a peaceful county of rolling countryside dotted with large estates.

Unfortunately though, the peaceful nature of her surroundings was not echoed in her home life. Her parents were constantly arguing and when she was six years of age they split up and later got divorced.

As a result of the divorce there was a messy custody battle which left an emotional scar upon the youngster. She later revealed how she remembered hearing the crunch of her mother’s footsteps on the gravel outside as she left the house.