Di-hard fans make a beeline for ticket to Diana’s graveyard

The estate will be thrown open to public from July 1 to August 30, Diana’s birthday.

Spencer has announced that only 1,52,500 tickets will be sold and only 2,500 visitors will be allowed in daily to the estate where his sister is buried.“It’s a mad rush. We have calls from Australia, South Africa, from the European continent, the United States and even Latin America and Asia asking for bookings,” Shelly Anne Claircourt, the spokesperson for Earl Spencer, said.

The money collected from the bookings will be used for a multi-million-pound-sterling memorial complex for Diana, and any further profits will be donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Welfare Fund, Claircourt said.

The rush for bookings is unprecedented despite the fact that the tickets would not allow the visitors access to the Lake Island, known as the Round Oval, where the Princess is buried, and let the curious only have a clear view of a memorial which is still being designed.

A temple at the lake’s edge, which was bought by the Fifth Earl Spencer from the gardens of Admirality House in the 19th century, is being restored and dedicated to Diana’s memory for the public to lay flowers.

Work is also under way to convert the stableblock into a Diana museum which will house rare childhood photographs of the late Princess, cine footage from her early life and the Spencer tiara, that she wore on formal occasions.