I dug out the jewel that made Diana's engagement ring ... it changed

TWO hundred pounds! It was a fortune to the impoverished miner.

Enough to feed his wife and their four children. And enough to buy them new clothes and shoes. The days of clawing at the sodden clay with his bare hands at the bottom of a pit were over. His family's future was assured.

After more than 20 years as a prospector in Sri Lanka, Jayaratne Lage had stumbled upon the world's most famous sapphire. The sapphire to be given by Prince Charles to Princess Diana as her engagement ring. And whatever happened in the future, life would never be the same. "At the time I didn't know it would end up in the Princess's ring," Jayaratne said.

"But I knew the stone was blessed with magic because it saved my family from poverty when I had no money.""

Jayaratne was paid just pounds 200 for the stone by a local gem merchant in the late Seventies.

In 1981, surrounded by 14 diamonds and set in 18-carat white gold, it was sold by royal jewellers Garrard to Prince Charles for pounds 28,500.

Before Diana's death the ring itself was valued at more than pounds 250,000. Now it is priceless.

"It was easily the biggest find of my life," said Jayaratne.

"I hadn't found anything of significance for months and months that year.

"The market for sapphires was very bad and I was very poor. My family hardly had enough money for food.

"I could only survive because the landowner was paying my day to day expenses in return for a share of the mine.

"Everyday I dreamt I would find a stone which I could sell for a lot of money.

"And one day it happened. It was quite a large rough stone and I sold it to a local dealer.

"It seemed like a huge amount and for the first time in my life I had money.

"The first thing I did was buy clothes for my family and text books for my children.

"I felt secure in the knowledge that I could feed my family for months to come. I was also able to buy machinery to help my work."

Since the day it was first seen on the hand of Lady Diana Spencer, standing at the garden steps of Buckingham Palace, Jayaratne's gem has become the most famous sapphire in the world.

The ring has also been an outward sign of the ups and downs of the Wales's marriage.

Diana treasured the sapphire and carried on wearing it even after the bitter divorce from Prince Charles. When she lost weight during her battle against bulimia she wore a second ring to stop it slipping off.

The sapphire ring became a symbol of her message to the Royal Family and to the world: I'll not go quietly.

After her death it was the only heirloom Prince William asked to keep as a symbol of the love his parents once shared.

Jayaratne dug up the sapphire five miles from the town of Ratnapura, which means "gem place".

He had mined the nearby hills using traditional methods dating back thousands of years because he could not afford more modern machinery.

The money from Diana's sapphire helped him to buy equipment, which in turn led to increased production and prosperity.

"The stones I found were not as big and as valuable but I was able to make a reasonable living and I had hoped to retire when I was about 60," said Jayaratne. But in 1996 he was struck by a run of bad luck. It was the year Diana got divorced, and a time when she stopped wearing the ring until her divorce was finalised.

Jayaratne staked a claim on several plots of land which failed to turn up gems. And then his income dried up.

"Over the past two years things have been really tough," said 69- year- old Jayaratne, who was 13 when he first went down the mines.

"I'm superstitious and I believe my fortunes changed when Princess Diana stopped wearing the ring."

Nowadays Jayaratne works his mine with his two partners, 58-year- old Giumathilake and 45-year-old Karunaratne.

The three men spend around 10 hours a day caked in clay and mud mining the seam and pulling the raw material in which the gems are found to the surface by hand.

Conditions in the mine are claustrophobic and it is so hot they have to strip down to their underwear to work. It is dangerous, back- breaking work.

Their ramshackle mine is little more than a hole in the ground shored up with rickety timber and covered with a hut made of palm leaves.

They spend weeks digging up tons of clay and soil by hand until they strike a seam of earth known as gem soil.

This special mineral layer, between 15 and 50ft below the surface is most likely to contain valuable gemstones.

They then dig into the seam and the gem soil is hauled to the surface in crude cane baskets at the end of a rope on a manual pulley.

Once at the surface the clay is washed in a sieve, and the men strain their eyes to spot sapphires left behind in the residue.

The tunnels they crawl through are barely a foot wide and Jayaratne and his partners can only manoeuvre kneeling down or laying down on their stomachs. Scores of miners are killed every year when the walls of the tunnels cave in and trap below the surface.

Jayaratne said: "I'm too old to go down the mines now."

"I'm not as fast or as nimble as I used to be, and I'm scared that if the timbers give way I won't have time to get out."I don't feel safe anymore.""

The man who bought Princess Diana's sapphire from Jayaratne is local gem merchant Nimal Pathirana.

He remembers selling the gem on to a London merchant.

Later he was told by the then President Jayewardene and the British High Commission that one of his gems had been used as the centre piece in Princess Diana's engagement ring.

Nimal said: "I was honoured. I sell many sapphires and I never know where they are going to end up. At the time I was a close friend of the President and I remember at dinner party he told me that the sapphire had been used in Princess Diana's ring. We also had a friend who worked in the information department at the British High Commission who confirmed this."

A spokeswoman at the British High Commission in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo said: "I can recall President Jayewardene telling that Nimal's stones had been used to make Princess Diana's ring.""

Nimal's connection with the Royal Family didn't end there.

When the Queen visited Sri Lanka in 1981 he gave her an 18-carat blue sapphire worth pounds 25,000 as a gift (now worth pounds 100,000).

To his astonishment he was later told by the President that this stone had also ended up in Princess Diana's collection. Nimal said: "I sell most of my jewellery to extremely rich Japanese clients, but I'm most proud of the sapphires which have ended up in the Royal collection."

Nimal was so impressed by Princess Diana's work with children that he was inspired to help victims of the Civil War in Sri Lanka.

To this end he helped set up an orphanage for children whose parents had been killed in the troubles.

The orphanage is run by a Buddhist monk and supported by donations from Nimal, who is the treasurer.

Nimal has made millions from the jewellery business but has donated tens of thousands to the RAIN orphanage in the village of Marapana.

Nimal said: "Princess Diana was a great woman and I admired her work with children.

"I feel that some of her goodness has rubbed off on me."

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