One venue was hosting the clash of London’s football titans while the other was a sleepy Yorkshire village that hosted a famous battle more than 900 years earlier.

Unfortunately for Earl Spencer’s teenage daughter, who had been keen to see the Easter Sunday clash between Chelsea and their arch-rivals Arsenal, her taxi driver’s sat-nav system did not know the difference.

The Earl’s daughter and a friend had been picked up from the family pile in Althorp, near Northampton, with plenty of time to spare for the 85-mile trip to Stamford Bridge in West London.

However, as Didier Drogba was inspiring the Blues to a 2-1 victory, the friends were wondering what they were doing in the village of Stamford Bridge, eight miles outside York and 230 miles away from Chelsea.

One villager said that the girls may have been able to take in some sporting action on their unintended visit. “We do have a village football team,” Bryan Lawson said. “But it is not quite up to the standard of Chelsea.”

Mayfair Taxis, the Northampton-based firm responsible, has apologised to the Earl’s family for the mistake. Paul Achiampong, the firm’s owner, sought to relieve the driver of blame. “Mistakes do happen now and again. But I admit this is a big one.

“But the fault was with the control staff, not the driver. He ended up putting Stamford Bridge into his sat-nav and it said it was in the North of England. He checked it was right and it was confirmed by the controller. I’m still trying to figure out how that was possible. It’s baffling.”

The Althorp estate declined to say whether it was the Earl’s eldest daughter, Kitty, or one of her sisters, Eliza or Katya, who had intended to go to the Chelsea game. The most likely spectator, Kitty Spencer, 17, the daughter of Earl Spencer’s first wife, Victoria Lockwood, and heir to the family’s £100 million fortune, became the most prominent of the Earl’s children when she was voted Tatler’s most eligible female last year.

Kitty divides her time between South Africa, where she studies at Reddam House and where her father’s estranged wife lives, and Althorp, the 300-acre family seat where the Earl’s sister, Diana, Princess of Wales, is buried.

A spokeswoman for the estate said that Mayfair had promised to “sort the matter out amicably”.

At Stamford Bridge – the village – many of its 3,500 residents were amused at the mishap. Previously, its claim to fame had been as the venue for a battle in 1066 when King Harold defeated the Viking invaders.

Mr Lawson, who has lived in Stamford Bridge for 20 years with his wife Patricia, said it was far removed from the plush suburbs of West London. “The village is a wonderful place to come and visit. But sadly you will not get to see a lot of Premiership football up here.”

Driven to despair

— In January this year a delivery driver misunderstood directions from his sat-nav and ended up on a railway line. Trains were delayed for an hour before the car was towed from the tracks at Oulton Broad, Norfolk

— Daytrippers from Gloucestershire planning a Christmas shopping trip to Lille in France last December ended up in Lille, Belgium

— A Czech lorry driver was led astray by his sat-nav and ended up stuck in a narrow country lane in Ivybridge, near Plymouth, last November. He had to sleep in his cab for three nights before a tractor was able to tow him out

— In 2006, an ambulance taking a patient to a nearby hospital in Brentwood, Essex, drove to Brentwood, Manchester. Luckily, the patient came to no harm