The late Princess Diana’s childhood home – Althorp Estate, which has been the ancestral seat of the Spencer family for over 500 years, was targeted last night in an arson attack
The brother of the late Princess Diana – Earl Spencer – has revealed that “vandals” burned down a farmhouse on the Althorp Estate, Northamptonshire, which has been the ancestral seat of the Spencers for over 500 years.
The Earl said he was “stunned” by the attack on his home, when he announced the upsetting news on X, formerly known as Twitter. He wrote: “Stunned to learn that one of @AlthorpHouse’s farmhouses – fortunately, unoccupied at the time – was apparently burnt down by vandals last night. With thanks to @northantsfire for doing their very best. So very sad that anyone would think this a fun thing to do.”
Sadly, the conservation manager of Althorp, Adey Greeno, explained that the barn has since had to be “razed to the ground” for “safety reasons.” Fire crews were reported to still be on the scene a day later, with the Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue service saying: “The service remains on scene after a fire on Mill Lane in Kingsthorpe, Northampton. We were called at around 1.30am this morning (May 28) and crews arrived to find an unoccupied two-story property fully on fire.
“At the height of the fire, four crews from across the service wearing breathing apparatus used hose-reel jets to contain the blaze and prevent it from spreading. This morning, one crew remains on the scene with a water bowser to continue dampening down any remaining hotspots.”
As yet, the fire service has not confirmed the exact cause of the blaze. Princess Diana was born at Park House on the Sandringham Estate, a property her father leased from the late Queen. She was a close neighbour and family friend of the Royal Family and reported to have played with King Charles’s younger siblings as a child, spending so much time with them she referred to the late Queen as Aunt Lilibet.
When Diana was 13 years old, her father inherited the title of Earl Spencer and the vast 13,500-acre Althorp Estate, which meant the family moved to Northamptonshire, where Diana would spend the remainder of her childhood.
Sprawling estate
The 30-bedroom property has belonged to the Spencer family since 1508, and 500 acres of the estate are taken up by just the main house and sprawling gardens, with other properties like cottages, woodlands, and farms among the other thousands of acres.
It is also the final resting place of the late Princess Diana, after her untimely death at age 36 in 1997. She was buried in the middle of the Round Oval Lake on a small island, where the public is not allowed to visit. The island features a small temple which bears her name, along with a bench and plaques paying tribute to her.
The main Althorp House is a sprawling, lavish mansion – said to rival even some of the properties of the Royal Family themselves – across over 100,000 square feet, there are 90 rooms, including a ballroom, billiard room, and a gallery that includes iconic pieces like War and Peace (1637) by Anthony van Dyck’s.
There are corniced ceilings, imposing gold and silver chandeliers, alongside breathtaking sweeping staircases. There is also a library that boasts a whopping 10,000 books, alongside huge patterned rugs that cover the hardwood floors, and cosy red armchairs – making it a bookworm’s heaven.
The Painters’ Passage sees historic and stunning artwork throughout the walls, with busts dotted every few metres on marble plinths.
When it comes to formal dining, the Spencers use the Malborough Room, which can seat 42 guests and is also littered with an impressive art collection – but there are four other official “state rooms” in the property, including the Great Room, the Saloon, and the State Dining Room
Over time, the aristocratic Spencer family have used the iconic rooms for different purposes, with the Great Room once playing host to political meetings, now used as a business space and a dining room for the family themselves – per The Sun.
In the summer months, members of the public can visit Althorp, and it can also be rented as a wedding venue – though it is likely to set you back tens of thousands of pounds to do so, but if you can stretch that far, you could tie the knot in any of the five state rooms.
Diana’s unhappy childhood
In her own words, recorded on tapes that were then secretly passed on to author Andrew Morton, Diana admitted that despite growing up with wealth, privilege and in a luxurious property like Althorp she had a “very unhappy childhood”.
She also said that moving to the gargantuan estate was a “terrible wrench” because it meant leaving everything she knew behind in Norfolk, where she had spent the bulk of her childhood.
Her parents’ marriage was not a happy one, and Diana claimed to have seen her father slap her mother on one occasion, with her mother “legging it” when she was a young child.
The family’s move to Althorp also coincided with another major life change – when her stepmother Raine appeared. For a long time, Diana did not have a good relationship with her stepmother, to whom she later said during an argument: “‘I hate you so much. If only you knew how much we all hated you for what you’ve done. You’ve ruined the house, you spend Daddy’s money and what for?”
Raine had reportedly undertaken a massive refurb of Althorp, which included selling off many antiques and other paintings.
Just a few years after moving to Althorp, Diana’s father had a massive stroke, which saw him slip into a coma – a period during which Diana claimed Raine kept his children away from him.
Before Diana’s death, relations with her stepmother did improve, but at one stage they were so bad that Diana even pushed Raine down a flight of stairs at Althorp, with Raine’s personal assistant reported as saying: “She was badly bruised and dreadfully upset. It was not justified at all, it was a cruel heartless thing to do and I think it was Diana’s perception of how Raine was treating Mrs Shand Kidd [Diana’s mother, Frances]
“I think Diana was very stressed. This sounds really wrong but she wasn’t centre of attention on this occasion.”