EXCLUSIVE: From the pits to the Palace - Kate Middleton's mining ancestors slaved underground, yet the Princess of Wales is actually related to the QUEEN MOTHER (not to mention husband, William

EXCLUSIVE: From the pits to the Palace - Kate Middleton's mining ancestors slaved underground, yet the Princess of Wales is actually related to the QUEEN MOTHER (not to mention husband, William

HER ancestors famously toiled underground for generations, mining coal for slave wages in the north of England.

Yet the pits where Kate Middleton’s forbears cut coal have a curious resonance. For they were owned by the Bowes-Lyons, family of the late Queen Mother.

Stranger still, The Mail’s new Royals section can reveal that some of Kate's distant relatives had originally owned the mines where less fortunate branches of her family would later work.

And that the Princess of Wales is actually related to the Queen Mother and her descendants - including William, of course.

Kate Middleton's ancestors both owned and worked in mines from the late Queen Mother's Bowes-Lyon family. They are connected by the figure of a 17th century nobleman, Sir William Blakiston of Gibside Hall near Newcastle, as this family tree shows

Catherine Middleton leaves Westminster Abbey with husband William after marrying into the Royal Family in 2011A regal Kate speaks to Buckingham Palace guests in 2022. She is wearing the Lotus Flower Tiara often worn by the Queen MotherSir Thomas Conyers is an eighteenth century ancestor of  Catherine Middleton. But his side of the family fell on hard times, with some descendants working in the mines his family had once ownedl, George, in 1586, he replaced the old house with a spacious mansion, Gibside Hall, displaying the Royal coat of arms alongside the Blakiston crest over its entrance after being knighted by James I in 1617.

The Blakiston fortunes flourished over the next century. Sir Ralph became 1st Baronet of Gibside on July 30, 1642.

And Gibside heiress Elizabeth, granddaughter of Sir Ralph, married MP and Trinity College Cambridge graduate Sir William Bowes, in 1691, so uniting two of the wealthiest families in Britain.

He owned Streatlam Castle, a Baroque stately home and country pile which stretched 1,190 acres and incorporated 20 farms, in Barnard Castle, County Durham, another of the Queen Mother’s family seats.

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother, came from a family which had owned mines in the north east of England. She is pictured with the Lotus Flower Tiara sometimes worn by Kate today The Harrison family pictured in Hetton-le-Hole, a mining town near Sunderland in 1919. Left-to-right middle row are: Kate's great-grandfather Tom Harrison, great-great grandfather John Harrison and great-great grandmother Jane HarrisonBoldon Colliery in Co Durham. Kate Middleton is descended from north east miners - and from north east mine owners!

Elizabeth Blakiston's granddaughter Mary Eleanor Bowes, born in February 1749 and brought up at Gibside, became the wealthiest heiress in Brita as Sir John Conyers, a Royalist army officer, who was created a baronet by Charles I in 1628 and granted a £100-a-year pension.

 The family lived in considerable style during the 17th century.

But, while he inherited the title from his second cousin, Sir Baldwin Conyers, the fourth baronet, in 1731, he did not inherit the family estate, Horden Hall, a Grade II* listed 17th century manor house in County Durham, so was forced to make a living as a glazier.

His four children had to survive on their wits. His oldest son Blakiston, who became the 6th baronet, joined the navy, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant,.

Through the generous patronage of the Bowes family, he was offered the lucrative post of collector of the port of Newcastle, which enabled him to build a fortune.

When he died in 1791, his brother Nicholas inherited the title but he left his riches to his nephew George, who ‘squandered the whole fortune’ in the space of three years in ‘scenes of the lowest dissipation’.

By the time Kate’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Sir Thomas became the 9th – and final – baronet, there was no money left.

Unlike his older brother, he refused to beg to his rich Bowes-Lyon relatives for help and, at the age of 72, ended up in the parish workhouse of Chester-le-Street.

Genealogist Sir Bernard Burke, who complied Burke’s Peerage, wrote: ‘In that work-house room, among other parish paupers, is poor old Sir Thomas Conyers, the last Baronet of Horden, bearing up manfully and patiently against his bitter adversity.’

Rich benefactors rallied around and found Sir Thomas alternative lodgings but he died two weeks later, on March 15, 1810, leaving his three daughters ‘in inferior situations’, and no son to inherit the title.

So it was that his family ended up working in the very mines owned by their distant relatives: Sir Thomas’ granddaughter Jane Hardy was the first to marry a miner, setting a tradition which would go down through the generations.

She married pitman James Liddell, who was Kate’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather, and their son Anthony followed in his footsteps, working in the Gibside mines near Gibside Hall.

But, when Anthony’s daughter Jane – Kate’s great-great grandmother - married miner John Harrison, in 1860, they migrated to the pit village of Hetton-Le-Hole, in County Durham.

It was here - in a simple pebbledash bungalow - that Kate’s great-great grandfather John, a deputy at Lyons Colliery, set down roots, marrying wife Jane and having nine children, including Kate’s great-grandfather Thomas, who was born in 1904.

Dorothy and Ronald Goldsmith, Catherine Middleton's grandparents on her mother's side. It is Dorothy's drive and ambition that is often credited for the improvement in the family fortunes

Gibside may only have been 16 miles down the road in distance but it was a world away for the Harrisons. Little did they know that a century later, their descendant would be living in Kensington Palace.

On the death of the last baronet, Burke wrote: ‘A time may yet come, perchance, when a descendant of one of these simple artizans may arise, not unworthy of the Conyers’ ancient renown.

‘And it will be a gratifying discovery to some future genealogist, when he succeeds in tracing in the quarterings of such a descendant the unsullied bearing of Conyers of Durham.’