The council estate Lady and her aristo-cats

TENANTS on a council estate who used to ignore the old woman with seven cats who said she was a "Lady" were amazed to discover she really was an aristocrat.

Last week just a handful of mourners attended the funeral of Lady Kathryn Van d'Freeces at St James Church, near Mottram, Cheshire.

Earlier, in accordance with her last wishes, her pets - "my aristo- cats" - were taken to the chapel of rest to file past her coffin.

Now her obituary in a local paper has revealed that Lady Kathryn was in fact the daughter of a silent movie star and an English lord.

She graduated with a double first from Cambridge then became a star ballerina, even performing with the Kirov Ballet in Russia.

John Horridge, one of her neighbours in nearby Hattersley, said: "She told us she was a Lady but you just don't think a Lady would be living on a council estate. So we took what she said with a pinch of salt."

Lady Kathryn, who was 84, married at 17 but lost her husband die in an air crash. In 1939 she married a diplomat, and had a daughter, now deceased. She moved in 1986 to Hattersley, Cheshire, and last year was diagnosed with leukaemia.

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