THE mother of the Countess of Wessex, Mary Rhys-Jones, who lived in Kent, has died in hospital following a short illness.

A statement issued by Buckingham Palace said she died peacefully on Sunday. She was 71.

She lived with her husband Christopher at a farmhouse in the village of Brenchley in the Weald of Kent.

She was well known in the village and elsewhere for her extensive charity work.

The Countess was with her mother at her bedside at the Kent and Sussex Hospital at Tunbridge Wells. She was "deeply saddened", the statement said.

In May this year it was reported that Mrs Rhys-Jones had had cancer surgery. The funeral will be private. Arrangements for a thanksgiving service will be announced later.

Mrs Rhy-Jones was born Mary O’Sullivan in 1934, the daughter of a bank manager, though her family were mainly Irish shopkeepers and farmers.

She met her husband while on holiday in Gibraltar and they set up home in Oxfordshire before settling in Brenchley.

The Countess is the couple’s second child, born in 1965, two years after her brother David.