Kate Middleton Tours Leeds Factory With Connection To Her Family’s Past
etcanada.comKate Middleton made a royal visit to a British textile mill that shares a surprising connection to her own family history. On Tuesday, the Princess of Wales visited the family-owned AW Hainsworth textile mill in Leeds.
As People reports, Middleton’s paternal grandparents owned a the wool manufacturing company William Lupton and Co., which was sold to AW Hainsworth back in 1958.
Her great-grandfather Noel Middleton, who married Olive Lupton, was a director of the company, with the couple going on to have three sons — one of whom was her grandfather, father of her father, Michael. READ MORE: Dolly Parton Had To Turn Down Tea With Kate Middleton Because ‘She Wasn’t Going To Promote My Rock Album’ “She had had a chat with her parents, and they had been filling her in,” Rachel Taylor, a member of the Hainsworth family, told People. “They had obviously done some research.
She spoke to a lot of people today. We were able to put a bit of bells and whistles onto that.” One of the mill’s pieces that caught her eye was a scarlet tunic, of the type worn by guards at Buckingham Palace. “She loved it,” the company’s operational excellence director, Zena Al Mausawe, told the magazine. “It was great that she saw the scarlet tunic which is the iconic red fabric that everyone associates with Buckingham Palace and the guards.
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