The Spencer family has experienced extraordinary personal grief in recent history.
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In 1960, many years before the tragic death of Princess Diana in 1997, parents John Spencer and Frances Roche lost their baby son, just ten hours after his birth.
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The Hon. John Spencer was the third child born to the couple, following elder sisters Lady Sarah McCorquidale and Jane Fellowes. Sadly, his time on the world was short – but his memory lives on through his younger brother, Charles Spencer.
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Charles – the youngest of the five siblings – took to Instagram this week with a rare personal post. He chose to share a before-and-after of little John's gravestone, revealing the poignant inscription carved into the stone.
Charles shared rare photos of his brother John's gravestone
"Looking as it should, now…," Charles, 57, wrote. "I never knew my older brother, John, and live 100 miles from his grave - but, seeing it last summer, realised serious action was required. Thank you, BB, for making it look as it should. #family #rip #brother."
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The father-of-seven was quickly inundated with messages in response to his post. "Wow.. a piece of history many of us did not know," one wrote, while a second shared: "I knew both my brothers who sadly passed in '75 & '77 when I was still under 10, but their grave became a place of much solace for our family. All these years on I still visit."
Charles's father John Spencer with his second wife, Raine, outside Althorp
John was buried at Sandringham; at the time, the family lived at Park House on the estate. Princess Diana, meanwhile, was laid to rest on a small island in the grounds of Althorp, located in the middle of the ornamental Round Oval Lake.
The Spencer family's ancestral home in Northamptonshire boasts 90 rooms and some 550 acres – and was where Princess Diana grew up with her three siblings, prior to her 1981 marriage to Prince Charles.
Princess Diana has been laid to in the grounds of Althorp
Charles inherited Althorp following the death of his father in March 1992, at which point he also succeeded as 9th Earl Spencer.
He now resides there with his third wife, Karen Gordon. The couple were married in June 2011 and together share daughter Lady Charlotte Diana, nine.
Charles resides at Althorp with third wife, Karen
He is also a father to four children from his first marriage to Victoria Lockwood – Lady Kitty, Lady Eliza, Lady Amelia and Louis Spencer, Viscount Althorp. In December 2011, he married second wife Caroline Freud, with whom he has two children – The Hon. Edmund Spencer and Lady Lara.
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