Crook/Coope Heir Hunters

Every year, thousands of people die

with no will and with no apparent relatives.

Tracking down their long-lost families

is a job for the Heir Hunters.

Coming up...

...the Heir Hunters uncover an unexpected fortune of a council worker

hidden in the strangest of places.

I was very surprised when I found out he'd got money in suitcases,

but it did fit in with his reluctance to spend money.

And the intriguing case of two Victorian philanthropists,

an £800,000 school and some difficult dying wishes.

There's no clue at all to what was meant and any expert, will expert,

would have to deem this impossible to implement.

Plus, how you may be entitled to inherit

some of the unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be headed your way?

More than two thirds of people die without leaving a will.

If they have no obvious relatives, their money goes to the Government,

who last year made a staggering £18 million from unclaimed estates.

That's where the Heir Hunters step in.

More than 30 heir-hunting companies make it their business to track down

the rightful kin to these unclaimed estates.

Fraser & Fraser is one of the largest firms of heir hunters in Britain.

It's run by Andrew, Charles and Neil Fraser.

You can see the smile on their face

as they know they're going to receive

sometimes tens, possibly even hundreds, of thousands of pounds.

A real life-changing event.

In its 30-year history, it's united over 50,000 heirs

with unclaimed estates worth a whopping sum of over £100 million.

It's Thursday,

the day the Treasury publishes its list of unclaimed estates.

The team have identified those which they think contain property,

making them potentially high value cases and ones worth pursuing.

I'm expecting it to be quite active today, quite competitive, really,

and fingers crossed, we'll do well.

How are we getting on with the census?

For every name that the team thinks has a property, there are others that are more difficult to judge,

especially as all estates are listed without giving any values.

Just very briefly remind me what search we've actually got.

Senior Case Manager, Tony Pledger, has been given one such case,

that of Crook.

You never know what you're gonna find and indeed,

life's full of surprises, you know.

I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't work out to be a lot more

than we anticipate. Equally so,

I wouldn't be surprised if it would turn out to be a lot less.

You just dunno, you know.

Albert Edward Crook died on 1st February 2008, aged 69.

He'd never married or had children

but had lived all his life in Cheshire.

He worked for many years as a farm labourer

at Hodge Lane Farm in Northwich,

where he was responsible for the welfare of the working horses.

Peter Cotherall, the current owner of the farm,

recalls Albert's dedication.

Albert was one of the finest horsemen that ever worked on any farm.

When the horse would be out ploughing the fields and if a shower of rain

happened to come, Albert would take his coat off

and put it over the kidneys on the horse, the horse's kidneys,

to keep it warm and forgot about himself.

That's how good Albert was.

His loyalty and industrious nature

must have made Albert a cut above the rest.

I'd certainly, as a contractor on a farm, I worked on farms myself

and I know all about hard work on farms.

I would staff that man. He would work for me.

Albert loved to work outdoors,

but never strayed far from the area where he'd grown up.

Before he retired, he worked as a gardener for the local council.

For the last four years of his life, he lived at Morningside Rest Home.

He had a very reclusive life

and apart from a few holidays in his later life,

I don't think he did a lot. I don't think he went anywhere.

He lived so frugally he must have never spent money at all.

Albert's working life wouldn't have made him a fortune,

but because he made no will, any money he did leave

is being held by the Treasury.

To get Albert's estate united with the rightful heirs,

the office need to kick-start the investigation.

He dies in Crewe in Cheshire and we couldn't positively identify

his home address, but I've now established that when he died

he was at a residential care home.

I've spoken with the care home,

they've given me some of his details, previous address etc.

So, we've been making enquiries.

They thought that he had a niece that went to the funeral

and that rather seems unlikely,

so it's probably either a niece by marriage or...

I don't know what, but we do think that he had a sister.

Tony has some pieces of information, but nothing is confirmed.

To get accurate family records, he needs help on the ground.

That's where the travelling Heir Hunters come in.

Frasers has a network of senior researchers right across the country

who are ready to go wherever the hunt takes them.

They collect the vital birth, death and marriage certificates

as well as interview people who knew the deceased.

But their most important job is finding and signing up heirs.

Ex-Fraud Squad Detective, Dave Mansell,

has been an Heir Hunter for over ten years.

His patch is the Manchester region and he's on hand to help Tony with the Crook case.

Tony thinks he might have identified an address in Northwich,

but Albert Crook is hardly an unusual name, so...

he's gonna make some enquiries,

try ringing a neighbour or two and then...

But we'll carry on and get the death certificate

to see if it confirms his suspicions.

And the only way to confirm these suspicions

is to find the birth, death and marriage certificates which are the building blocks

of creating a family tree.

With the information they get from these,

the researchers need to work out, generation by generation,

who the family is, who is entitled and then find any living heirs.

Only at this point can the company make its commission.

Dave Mansell is getting the death certificate for Albert

to confirm the little information they have

and also to try and find new clues for the family

from the informant's name.

Albert Edward Crook died 1st February, as we knew,

and it's from the Morningside Rest Home that Tony

had already got the information about,

so we're off to the rest home now.

We'll go and see the lady there.

Back in the office, the search room is in full swing...

..but not on Tony's little job.

All the effort is being put into a high value property case.

Yeah, he's married before. When was his first marriage?

So you're on your way up to the care home

to Morningside in Winsford, yeah?

While Tony waits for Dave to quiz the nursing home about Albert,

he and his one researcher are looking at potential Crook family members.

We've got the deceased, we've got that bloke,

who isn't entitled, he's a step-brother. That's the best I can do.

With little office support to dramatically push the case forward,

it's now all down to Dave Mansell and his face-to-face enquiries.

Albert Edward Crook, when was he admitted?

June 04, 2004.

Donna Liddiat looked after Albert for four years.

Her knowledge of him could be vital.

One lady in particular used to cook for him and I believe from speaking

to my deputy, Pauline, that they used to go on holiday together.

After he passed away, the lady's nephew phoned me

-to say that they'd found a suitcase...

-Right.

..and when they've opened it, there's a number of pay packets, unopened.

Unopened wage packets - I wish I could leave mine unopened!

SHE LAUGHS

-Great!

-Albert was never married.

-He never married?

-He lived with his mother and father in a bungalow

and when his mother and father died,

the bungalow was sold and he moved into this sheltered accommodation.

So, he probably got the proceeds from the bungalow?

Never married, lived with his parents.

There was an amount mentioned at that time of £100,000.

Did you tell Tony that?

I didn't... I've only just...

I've not... I found out this information after I spoke to Tony.

Right, OK, that's great.

This has just gone from being a small job for Tony

to a potentially major case for the company.

A suggested estate of up to £100,000 and the possible existence

of a suitcase full of money is an amazing turn of events.

-Bye.

-Bye.

Donna at the home here said that when the parents' bungalow was sold,

he got all the proceeds from it and he immediately moved into

the sheltered accommodation, hence never spending his wage packets.

No, no, no, I see what you mean. Right, OK then, that's good.

Our assumption is that the value of the mother's property

that was sold in the 1990s is still complete,

because it's been invested in his name.

So, what we're hoping is it's gonna be in the region of £100,000.

It's been an incredible morning.

A case that started out as possibly worthless could now be

as valuable as £100,000, not to mention the mysterious suitcase.

With this insider information,

it's more important than ever that Tony and his team find heirs.

If they don't, all this money will go to the government.

Coming across unexpected and unusual estates

is the high point of being an Heir Hunter.

One such case was referred to probate researcher company Hoopers,

the oldest heir-hunting firm in the country.

They were asked to unravel the mystery of who owned a valuable

Victorian school site worth almost £800,000.

We had a plot of land,

we had this dilemma of identifying the two donors,

what happened to them, who survived

and then identifying who was going to inherit from that estate.

It just made the whole case different from the normal cases that we deal with.

Essex Council Solicitor, Steven Woodyard,

was in charge of dealing with the ownership status of the school.

The case that I had on my hands was a site which was not owned by the council

but was acquired by two men in the latter part of the 19th century -

a Mr Coope and a Mr Belli -

and they acquired the site and owned it jointly.

This document basically told me

that the use and control of the school site and the school itself,

obviously, was transferred to Essex County Council.

This was in 1913. And it also implied that if

the school ceased to be a school provided by the council,

then it would pass back to the original owners.

If the school ever moved from the building,

the site would revert to the living heirs

of the two men who originally owned it.

And those first title holders were

wealthy philanthropists Reverend Charles Belli and Octavius Coope.

They collective donated £160 to buy the land and create the school.

Local benefactors and life-long friends,

they were buried side by side

in St Peter's Church Graveyard in South Weald.

But 128 years after its creation, the school they built

now had an increasing catchment area and the council needed to relocate

to a bigger building, so Steven Woodyard looked up the deeds to the property.

There was very little paperwork.

Normally I would expect to see several documents relating to land

and relating to the council's title in land.

In this case there are only two documents and the nature of them was,

one in particular, was different from anything I'd encountered before,

so I was entering sort of new territory.

The key article he unearthed was an old legal document

which revealed the ownership status of the land.

What we're looking at here

is the indenture of 1874 which details that the two men

held the property on a joint tenancy but if one of them died,

then the other one would actually take the whole legal interest

in the property and own it in their own right.

According to the indenture, whoever outlived the other

would be the owner of the site and their estate would benefit.

But who died first?

Establishing this would mean delving back into records over hundreds of years old,

so Steven needed to refer the case to the experts.

Hoopers is one of the UK's most established heir-hunting companies.

Founded in 1923,

they have a wealth of experience in genealogical research.

With over 20 full-time researchers, their detective work

has reunited thousands of heirs with unexpected windfalls.

They specialise in seeking out beneficiaries named in wills

and crucially, they also solve issues of property ownership.

Could I get someone to have a look for a death for me? Anna, would you?

Chairman, Mike Tringham, with 35 years of heir-hunting experience,

took up the challenge of unravelling Belli and Coope's final wishes.

Start about 1880.

Even if they were over 100 years old.

Having identified the problem of the two donors,

we then had to try and identify

when they died and who survived out of the two of them

because obviously there's no point in pursuing both families

because we knew from the official documentation

that only the survivor we need to concern ourselves with.

Once we've identified that individual,

then that's the direction we would go.

Right, Coope.

The site was estimated to be worth £800,000...

Yeah, that's him.

..a good inheritance for any surviving family members

of either the Coope or Belli family.

Jolly good.

But which was it going to be?

We discovered that the Reverend Charles Belli

died on 6th January 1886

in the Brentwood area and to our surprise, I suppose,

Octavius Edward Coope only survived by a matter of a few months

and he died on 27th November 1886, so obviously we knew that

we had to concentrate on the Coope family and as far as the Bellis' were concerned,

I'm afraid they were out of the frame.

The hunt had started for the Coope family,

to inform them of their unexpected windfall.

Octavius came from the upper trading classes.

He started work at his father's sugar refinery business in London's East End

before moving into the brewing industry.

In 1845, he joined Edward Ind's brewery, an already well-established

business in Romford, Essex, renaming it as Ind Coope.

This was to be the source of Octavius's wealth.

As soon as I saw the name Coope,

I obviously connected that with the brewery dynasty

and knowing that there was a big brewery in Romford,

I assume that there was some family connection

with that industry.

Octavius came from a traditional Victorian family,

marrying Emily Fulcher in 1848 and having one son,

Edward and five daughters, Ada, Mabel, Emily, Cicely and Alice.

Usually, the Heir Hunter's job is to trawl through birth,

death and marriage records,

tracing the bloodlines to find heirs.

But if the deceased had left a will, it would cut out all that work.

Unluckily for Mike, Octavius had done just that.

He actually left provision for his widow to benefit from his estate

during her lifetime but after her death,

then did he bequeath the residue of his estate to his five daughters.

There was a son as well, but for some reason

his son wasn't included in his will. Just the daughters.

In fact, his son, Edward, was well-catered for,

with Octavius leaving his portion of Ind Coope shares to him.

We have identified the five daughters and then we have to look to see

what happened to them, who they married,

when they died and then we look to see if they've left a will

and who they had left their estates to.

The will spanned over a century and was difficult to decipher, but they

led the Heir Hunters down through each generation of the Coope family.

Living relatives to Octavius Coope

were slowly being uncovered, including Bob Wayne,

whose great-grandmother, Mabel Coope,

was one of Octavius's daughters.

One suddenly realises one's learning a great deal more than,

or inheriting a great deal more than just a bit of money.

It is the sort of knowledge of what went on in the past.

Inheritance isn't just about money, it's about who you are.

Bob has an appointment with Mike to discover more about the family.

-This is the great man himself.

-Yes. Quite a good-looking man, actually!

Yes, I think he was. Obviously looking very prosperous.

I think the more I look at it and looking at you,

I think there is definitely a family likeness.

I received this letter completely out of the blue,

telling me that there was a sum of money resulting from

the sale of a property in Essex

and that it was very likely that we could be entitled to a share of it.

They asked me for the names of my brothers and sisters

and so I then had to turn round and write to them all

and tell them the good news.

I think I started by saying,

"Now is your chance to buy that yacht or that Roller.

"You're in for a share of a fortune!"

I then covered myself by saying it's more likely to be tuppence ha'penny!

With Bob's information, Hoopers was able to find more heirs.

The case was going well, almost too well.

The will of one of Octavius's daughters, Alice Edgerton Green,

stopped the hunt in its tracks.

In later life she'd made changes to her original will

and as she got older, she changed the effect of her will

and each successive codicil

became more and more obscure and complex

until we get to the point where it was, for us,

it was impossible to interpret what her intentions were.

Alice had written numerous notes and amendments, so it was very difficult

to decipher who she really wanted her legacy to go to.

Not knowing her heirs put the Coope legacy in doubt.

The school could not be sold

until Alice's final wishes could be fulfilled.

Nothing more could happen.

All of a sudden, we come up against a brick wall

and until we could resolve that one issue,

the whole matter couldn't be settled

because it would have an impact,

or it did have an impact, on all the other beneficiaries.

The whole case now rested on what to do with Alice's will.

The distribution of the entire £800,000 estate

would grind to a halt unless the Heir Hunters could find a solution.

To try and break the deadlock,

Mike was going to be in for a trip to the High Court.

For every case that is solved,

there are still those that stubbornly remain a mystery.

Currently, over 3,000 names drawn from across the country

are on the Treasury's Unsolved Case List.

Their assets will be kept for up to 30 years

in the hope that eventually

someone will remember and come forward to claim their inheritance.

With the estates valued at anything from £5,000 to millions of pounds,

the rightful heirs are out there somewhere.

Malcolm John Thomas died in Bethnal Green

in London in March 2007.

Originally from Pontypool in Wales,

his mother's maiden name was Griffiths.

Do these details ring any bells?

Could you be Malcolm's closest relative

and entitled to his unclaimed estate?

Gladys Mary Rayner died in London in April 2008.

She was born in West Ham in London in 1913 and her parents

were Robert Thomas Rayner and Mary Elizabeth Sheer.

Was Gladys a friend, neighbour or possibly even a relation of yours?

Since the release of the Treasury's list

of unclaimed estates this morning,

Heir Hunters Fraser & Fraser have been looking into a number of cases,

including that of Albert Crook.

He died at the Morningside Nursing Home in Crewe on 1st February 2008.

From the enquiries that both I have made on the telephone and Dave Mansell has made locally,

he appears to have been a long-term resident at the care home,

he didn't really have any friends.

He had Alzheimer's and advanced Parkinson's Disease,

so those two things combined don't really make you a chatty person,

you know, so he seems to be a bit of a loner, poor old boy.

With no property registered,

Albert's estate was assumed to be quite small.

I don't have a definite value on it yet.

But traveller Dave Mansell's enquiries with those who knew him

uncovered something that surprised everyone.

It has been rumoured that his estate may be worth up to £100,000

and it seems bricks and mortar

are not the only place to keep one's fortune!

I was very surprised when I found out he'd got money in suitcases,

but it did fit in with his reluctance to spend money.

He was obviously squirreling it away for a later date,

though when, I don't know!

But Tony is hoping to find more than just money.

It might be his marriage certificate,

it might be his wife's death certificate,

and it could be a family tree and it could be documentation

to show that he's directly related to Queen Victoria, I don't know.

But clearly, if we can track down the suitcase and have a look in it,

it might answer the... might solve the matter, mightn't it?

Dave Mansell is going to the sheltered accommodation in Northwich where Albert lived

before the care home and where he left his mysterious suitcase.

But there's some bad news.

Although the sheltered accommodation

confirm there's around £2,000 in the case,

they're reluctant to show Dave the contents.

Absolutely nowhere here.

I ended up speaking to the solicitor

who's got your name and telephone number now.

-The solicitor?

-Yeah.

The solicitor for the local authority,

because they wouldn't give this girl permission to talk to us.

Tony takes the matter into his own hands.

The care home is holding a couple of thousand pounds

of the deceased's money, but they don't know what to do with it,

so I've now advised the authorities of that,

the authorities have spoken with the care home, the care home are

now going to pass it over to the authorities

and everything gets a bit smoothed out.

So now at least Tony knows how much is in the case,

and with the possible value of £100,000 on the estate,

more of the team have joined the hunt for Albert Crook's heirs.

I'm entering the marriage of the father, David Ernest Crook.

And it's not long before they start uncovering Albert's relatives.

So far we've established his parents and that he's got a sister.

Unfortunately, from our point of view, the sister was unmarried

and has predeceased him as a spinster, so there's no near kin.

As there are no descendants from Albert, or his only sister, Edna,

the hunt would usually move onto finding cousins,

but Research Director, Gareth, has just found something else.

We've discovered that the parents were previously married

so if they have children from those marriages,

they'll be half-blood near kin.

We're hoping that there are children and we can get some heirs from them.

The team move quickly to find the crucial birth,

death and marriage records relating to Albert's father's previous family

and they soon identify several paternal half-blood relatives.

The deceased, Albert, and his sister, Edna, were children

from David Ernest Crook's second marriage to Annie Burgess.

David Crook's previous marriage was to Margaret Pearson

and together they had four children -

Edna, Edith, William and Charlie.

Although they are now all deceased, Edith and Charlie did have children.

If they, or any of their children, are alive,

they would be half-blood nephews and nieces and, more importantly, heirs.

A search through the phone book

rewards the team with a contact number

for the widow of one of the half-blood nephews, David.

Tony wastes no time in giving her a call to break the news.

Had your husband still been alive, he would, we think,

have been entitled to a share of this estate

that we're dealing with, but as he's passed on,

then unfortunately I don't think you'd be entitled

because you wouldn't be a blood relative of his, you see.

You are sometimes, but I don't think you are. Anyway, so...

Well, you're his wife, yeah, but you're not a blood relative, you see!

So, his entitlement would pass to his children.

It turns out David's widow, Winifred,

had three children who would all be entitled

and several other family members,

who may also be heirs, live close by.

Hello, Dave.

Right, listen. I think it might be best if you up stumps to Warrington,

if you could, because I've seen, I've spoken to this lady

and she's happy for you to go and see her after three o'clock.

So there's several people in Warrington worthy of a visit.

Right, I'm en-route.

Dave Mansell's appointments are now a priority.

It's down to him to visit all of the Crook heirs found so far.

Luckily, his first call is to see several heirs at once.

Alwyn, Albert's paternal half-blood niece,

Win, the widow of a paternal half-blood nephew

who will not be entitled, and her son, Tony, who IS an heir.

A member of the Crook family has died without leaving a will,

so it means all the blood relatives will be entitled

to a part of that estate.

You are one of these people.

You descended from Edith Crook, didn't you?

-That's right.

-That was your mum?

-Yes.

-I just need to take some details.

-Is that all right?

-Yes, that's fine.

Without revealing the name of the deceased,

Dave Mansell works through the family information.

Is there anybody else in the family that you know about that's related

to you that you've not told me about, on the Crook side?

-No, not that I can remember or think, no.

-Right.

It becomes apparent that Alwyn never knew her half-uncle Albert.

What's happened is this. Your great-grandfather, your grandfather,

married twice and there were children from the first marriage

and children from the second.

It's complicated the whole investigation, really,

into tracing you.

But going over the family history jogs Alwyn's memory.

-There was a disagreement after...

-Your mum's Dad?

Is that the one that was married twice, yeah?

It's coming to me now, what she said,

because I think that's how they fell out,

because when he got married again and I think there was children

and she didn't have much to do with her dad.

-Who didn't, Edith?

-Yeah.

Often, the reason Heir Hunters investigate cases

is because of past family splits,

but it can be a rewarding part of the job

to inform heirs about their family background.

I found it interesting and you learn things about your family, so...

and I'm waiting for the family tree, you know,

so that would be quite interesting.

It's a big family.

And I think the services of Dave, how he's explained everything today,

has been very good, but it will be better

when I get the family tree because it's gonna open...

I can look back to see where did we come from and who?

Well, no, it's been a marvellous thing today.

As well as Alwyn and Tony,

the office have found a further four paternal half-blood heirs.

-All right.

-Well, thanks very much.

-Thank you, thanks for your hospitality.

-OK.

It's not quite wrapped up, but I would imagine

that we won't have to do a great deal more research.

There's still other certificates we've got to find

and a great deal of paperwork to do

but actual additional research,

I don't think we've got much more to do.

It's approaching the end of a long, hard day

but matters aren't quite as wrapped up as Tony thinks.

The team have just realised something

that's going to take the investigation into the next day.

A slight administrative cock-up, Al.

Well, you know this Kenneth bloke that we've got, Kenneth Burgess?

Well, being the illegitimate child of his mother,

that's a long word for half-blood!

Prior to her marriage to Albert's father, David Crook,

his mother, Annie Burgess, had two children out of wedlock -

Lillian and Kenneth.

The penny has suddenly dropped that these children, illegitimate or not,

are of course still maternal half-blood to Albert,

so they, or any of their children, would be heirs to his estate.

Unfortunately, despite this late stage of the game,

there's still gonna be more research to be done tomorrow.

It seems the investigations are not quite over after all.

It's day two of the investigation.

We're carrying on from yesterday's job when we went to Northwich,

Crewe, Warrington, Appleton.

We're now onto the maternal side of the family

and we're going to see, hopefully,

two or three heirs to the estate.

So, we're only a minute away so we'll knock onto it.

He's going to see brother and sister, Steven and Alison,

Albert's maternal half-blood nephew and niece.

Your dad was Kenneth?

That's him.

-Kenneth Burgess, otherwise known as Kenneth Burgess-Crook?

-Yeah.

How did that come about?

He was actually born out of wedlock.

-Yep?

-So he took my nan's maiden name.

-Annie?

-She was Annie Burgess.

-Right.

So he was actually christened... registered as Burgess.

-Yep.

-Nobody knew in the family!

It was only when my mother died

that he actually sorted out my mother's estate and it all become...

-Clearer?

-Yeah, that he wasn't actually a Crook, he was a Burgess.

Right. And then Annie remarried, didn't she?

Yes, she married... cos I knew of my granddad, I didn't know that he...

So you knew David Ernest Crook as your granddad?

-My granddad, yeah.

-Great.

That's super.

Now Dave Mansell has verified all the family details,

Steven's sister, Alison, arrives.

They both have memories of their half-uncle Albert.

When I used to go up to see my nan, I remember him.

You know, I was only a young kid.

-My biggest memories are when he used to cut the grass.

-Yeah, cos he...

He worked for the local council and used to pop in the house.

He'd come up, you know, in the street where we lived

and he'd call to my mum's for a cup of tea and a biscuit

or whatever and they were the memories I remember most of all.

They were the only times I really saw him.

All of the heirs will be in for a substantial windfall,

as a week later confirmation comes through to the office

of the real value of Albert's estate.

It's nice to know that it's turned out to be £100,000 plus

and both we, and of course the heirs that we traced,

will, you know, get a lot more than they might have anticipated.

The fortune that the thrifty Albert Crook never spent during

his lifetime will now get shared between

his nine half-blood relatives.

Uniting unsuspecting heirs with their rightful legacy

is the day to day work of the Heir Hunters.

We always take the view that there is always an answer out there

and if we possibly can, we will find that answer.

But when probate research company, Hoopers,

were trying to find the legal heirs

to a Victorian school site worth £800,000,

they were faced with over 100 years' worth of wills,

all stemming from original owner, Octavius Coope.

Things were going well until they found the will of Alice Edgerton Green, one of Octavius's daughters.

It contained numerous notes about who she wanted to inherit

that became increasingly vague.

It says something along the lines of,

"The residue to be used to build a church

"in a crowded area of London over the border if possible."

By today's standards, in any case,

building a church in a crowded part of London

would just be a financial nightmare.

You couldn't build. You'd need millions for a start.

"A crowded area of London over the border." Over the border of where?

What part of London, north, south, east or west?

I've no idea whatsoever.

There's no clue at all to what was meant.

It wouldn't... You couldn't carry out these wishes anyway, and I think

any expert, will expert, would have to deem this impossible to implement.

At the time when Alice was altering her will,

the school still would have

been playing a thriving part in the community.

Yvonne Limbrick of the British Schools' Museum

has her thoughts as to why patrons, Coope and Belli,

gave their money to build the school in the first place.

I think it's almost certain that the children who would have been going to

that school were from the poor families of the area.

They would have been a very mixed bunch but they would have been poor.

I would have expected that there would have been

one schoolroom, just the one,

and all the children would have been taught in that one schoolroom.

It would have been fairly bare,

quite bleak by today's standards. All the children would have had a slate

and a slate pencil and a sponge to erase their writing

and there would probably have been enough books

for two or three children to share...

..and that really and truly is about it.

Despite basic facilities,

the importance of the school would have been huge.

Attitudes to education were changing and it was no longer seen

as a privilege, but as a right for all.

It would have been very important

because it was a step towards a different life,

a step towards raising the expectations of people

to be able to better themselves.

For Mike, the only way to move the case along

was to get the legal advice of a QC who could make a judgment

on what to do with Alice's unintelligible will.

The QC ruled that Alice's case

should be treated as if she had died intestate,

as if she had not left a will.

Once we'd had the opinion from the QC,

we were able to work out the proportions in which each individual

relative of hers, under intestacy rules, was going to inherit

and we could draw the whole matter to a satisfactory conclusion.

As Alice had outlived her husband and all of her children,

they quickly established that her portion of the estate

would revert to her sisters and their beneficiaries.

It meant that the council could move successfully into their new school

and the heirs got their legacy.

Come on, good boy!

Bob Wayne, the great-great grandson of Octavius, and one of 32 heirs,

received his share of the £800,000.

We only got a small portion.

I believe that the luckiest ones got about £33,000 each,

whereas at the bottom of the tree, we got about £1,600.

I think that one is very interested in knowing about one's family

and I think most people would find if they actually looked into it

that they've got far more interesting relatives than they realised.

Indeed, you know, the connections seem to go on and on and on.

As for the school, Holly Trees is now situated in a new site,

with modern facilities for over 300 students.

I think there are winners all around.

The education authority end up with a bigger and better school,

the family, hopefully they're happy and satisfied financially,

and from the point of view of their ancestor,

the legacy of Octavius Coope and his friend, the Reverend Belli,

does continue and I'm sure they're not forgotten. All in all,

we think it's a pretty good job.

However, the biggest legacy is what Coope and Belli had created

for the wider community back in 1875 when the school was first built.

You see, and this gateway here is where we used to go in

and that part there was a classroom.

Sisters, Beryl Beckwith and Betty Shipton, have fond memories

of the school they attended in 1939.

Well, we were always made welcome.

They tried to make it as happy as they could.

In the first class, obviously, we had slates with the chalks

and then as you moved up after learning your ABC

and learning to write your name, then you obviously went up

to the next class where they took you further with your reading

and also joined up writing and...

-Arithmetic.

-Yeah!

Very happy days.

Everybody, you know, all joined in together

for playing games and everything.

There was never really a lot of nastiness with the children

because times were hard and we all had to get on together.

I did use to go home, because every time the bell went,

I naturally thought it was time to go home.

And of course Miss Pickett had other ideas.

She used to come up home after me and run me down Junction Road

with a big stick and I mean I had to literally...

THEY LAUGH

I didn't do anything like that. I was too good!

THEY LAUGH

If you believe that, you'll believe everything!

THEY LAUGH

And it's Octavius Coope's generosity over 125 years ago

that thousands of school children,

as well as 32 lucky heirs, have to be thankful for.

If you would like to find out more about

how to build a family tree or write a will, go to bbc.co.uk.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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