Duchess of Sussex contacts Grenfell community on five-year anniversary

The Duchess of Sussex quietly marked the five-year anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire with a “lovely” message to the local community.

The 40-year-old former actress – who was known as Meghan Markle before her marriage to Prince Harry – previously gave her support to the Hubb Community Kitchen and their charity in her first solo engagement as a member of the royal family, and on Tuesday (14.06.22), she got in touch with the organisation to let them know she was thinking about them on the sad day.

A post on the Hubb Community Kitchen’s Instagram account read: “Today is a day spent looking back, remembering and reflecting.

“I just found this picture of us all, on the day our cookbook came out. The Duchess had wrapped a book for each one of us and wrote a lovely message to each lady on the first page.

“Always very thoughtful, today we received a lovely voice message from the Duchess, being the 5 years anniversary of the Grenfell tragedy, asking how we are, about our children and families and giving us news of hers. Just being her beautiful kind self.”

Last October, Meghan called the volunteers at the kitchen – which provided meals for bereaved and homeless locals after 72 were killed in the London tower block tragedy in 2017 – to say she was “proud” of their “incredible” achievements.

Meghan – who wrote the foreword for the Hubb’s ‘Together’ cookbook, which raised funds to renovate the kitchen – told the group: “We founded Hubb together and I think what I’m most proud of is what you’ve all been able to do, not just what we created to meet an immediate need right after the fire.

“If you go back to where it all began you just didn’t have a place to cook and people forget that’s what it came down to, needing the resources to do what you do so well — as we all know because we can taste it. But also to do it together and how…the cookbook ended up having the impact we wanted because it raised enough to get you all the help in the kitchen you needed.”

The lunch was staged to mark the achievements of the women, who have launched their own projects since the cookbook, and Meghan – who has son Archie, three, and daughter Lili, 12 months, with Harry – praised the way they and the kitchen have become the heart of the local community.

She continued: “But beyond that, what you turned it into as a group and individually is incredible, you’ve just continued to take care of everyone in the community.

“If you think how many thousands of people have been affected by your recipes and by your love and what you’ve done to take care of frontline workers and families during Covid and children and after school groups and women in hospital and new mums…”