Diana mourned 4 years after her death
Published 9:00 pm Friday, August 31, 2001
Associated Press
LONDON — Princess Diana’s sons marked the fourth anniversary of her death in private Friday, while a devoted core of admirers bore their tokens of remembrance to the Kensington Palace gates that have become an unofficial public shrine.
The gates of the palace where Diana lived became a focus of mourning within hours of the Paris car crash that killed the princess on Aug. 31, 1997. Flowers often are left entwined in the ironwork.
A ring of tiny candles lined the base of the gates Friday, and one message read "Dearest Diana, wishing your sweetest dreams will continue."
As in previous years, no official commemoration of the death was arranged, and members of the royal family passed the day in private.
Prince William, 19, and Prince Harry, 16, planned to remember their mother "in their own way," said St. James’s Palace, the London office of the young princes and their father, Prince Charles.
Charles spent the day on the Balmoral estate in Scotland, the royal family’s traditional August retreat.
Althorp, Diana’s ancestral home — and where she is now buried, on an island in the middle of an ornamental lake — stood quiet in its manicured grounds, its gates closed to visitors.
In summer, the house is a magnet for people who come to see a museum dedicated to the princess by her brother, Earl Spencer. The estate, 70 miles northwest of London, closed for the season Thursday.
In northern England, a 47-acre Memorial Woodland to Diana officially opened Friday. Three young Bosnian pines were planted there as a symbol of her work in support of land mine clearance in the Balkans.
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