Royals attend Dowager, Duchess of Devonshire funeral

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall joined hundreds of mourners who gathered to pay their last respects to the last of the famous Mitford sisters The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.

More than 600 staff from Chatsworth House, the family seat of the Devonshires, lined the route from the stately home to St Peter's Church in estate village Edensor where a service was held for the 94-year-old who died last week.

Nina Nannar, ITV News Correspondent, reports.

Charles and Camilla followed behind the dowager's son, the Duke of Devonshire, who walked behind the hearse that carried his mother's wicker basket coffin.

The coffin, adorned with holly and other woodland foliage, was carried into the church by gamekeepers.

Around 200 mourners packed into the church but hundreds more crowded onto the village green outside to follow the funeral on two giant screens.

Among the traditional hymns and prayers played during the service was the Elvis Presley song How Great Thou Art - a tribute to the Dowager's love for the singer.

She was later buried - to the sounds of New York, New York played by a brass band - in the same plot as her husband Andrew who died in 2004.

The dowager spent much of her later life developing Chatsworth House and its grounds as a visitors' attraction.

In her youth she moved in the same circles as Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy, Adolf Hitler and Evelyn Waugh, and epitomised a privileged and glamorous aristocratic lifestyle that no longer exists.

Known as Debo to family and friends, the dowager probably led the most normal life out of the Mitford sisters - Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity and Jessica - who were the It girls of their day.