Kate Middleton - from coal pits to the throne

LONDON - An ancestor of Kate Middleton, who is Prince William’s fiancee, toiled for a pittance in the dark and filth of a coal pit.

John Harrison, the miner had lived in an unsanitary two-up, two-down terrace in the Tyne and Wear village of Hetton-le-Hole, in the shadow of the pit then owned by the family of the Queen Mother.

Now, just a century later, his great great granddaughter Kate Middleton has made the astonishing ancestral leap from the coal pits to the gilded palaces of the House of Windsor as the future Queen of England.

Nothing survives of the little mining cottage at 52 Charles Street in Hetton-le-Hole where John and his son Thomas lived, and it is now just a wasteland.

“I worked with a few Harrisons down the mines, but we never thought that one of us could have family at the palace one day,” the Sun quoted grandfather Bill Shields, 64, who worked in Hetton’s mine for seven years, as saying.

“When my father and his father were miners, around the same time as Kate’s relatives, it would have been back-breaking work.

“I’m sure the wedding is an absolute dream for Kate. We all wish her well,” he added. (ANI)