Walker/West Heir Hunters

Today, the team needs to rethink their heir-hunting tactics on a £250,000 estate.

Today, obviously, rule one has been broken.

They're trying to track down long-lost relatives who may

have no idea they're in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

On today's show...

Do you believe this Huddersfield birth?

The estate of a professional singer causes a real headache for the Heir Hunters.

So, things aren't looking terribly good.

And a case spanning 200 years reveals connections to Winston Churchill

and a surprise inheritance.

How do I feel about inheriting from this family, which isn't my family?

I feel quite pleased, actually!

Plus, how you could be entitled to unclaimed estates

where beneficiaries still need to be found.

Could you be in line for an unexpected windfall?

Every year in the UK,

an estimated 300,000 people die without leaving a will.

If no relatives are found,

then any money that's left behind will go to the Government.

Last year that amounted to £12 million.

But there are over 30 specialist firms competing to stop this happening.

They're called Heir Hunters, and they make it their business to track

down missing relatives and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

I love the fact that I can put families back together.

I can reunite people.

I can tell them secret histories about their own family

which they didn't actually know about themselves.

It's first thing Thursday morning,

and while most of the country thinks about breakfast,

Heir Hunters across the land are digesting the Treasury's latest list of unclaimed estates.

In central London, the team at Fraser and Fraser are poring over the names,

hoping to find a lucrative case.

It's a little bit early, I suppose, but let's see where we go on it.

The estates on the list are worth a minimum of £5,000,

and could potentially be worth many millions.

But at the moment, none of the advertised estates has got the team excited.

It's not terribly encouraging.

The Treasury's list doesn't say how much estates are worth,

so the team are searching for any clues that may give them

an idea of value.

Do you want to have a quick look at this?

Do you want to do an inquiry on that, then?

I can't, because there's no address.

Rench, Irene Rench, anyone got?

Walker?

Doreen Walker?

Neil's keen to start research,

and he's spotted a name he thinks has potential.

We're going to have a little look at this estate of Doreen Ellen Walker.

The advert's a little confusing,

because it is Doreen Ellen Walker, formerly Howard, nee Walker,

so it means her maiden name is Walker.

It also says she's a single woman,

which probably means she's a divorced lady.

Doreen Walker died in March 2010 aged just 62.

She had lived in Lewisham, in south-east London, for 10 years.

Friend and local lay preacher Neil Hill has fond memories of her.

My memories of Doreen were really very happy ones.

She was good company and pleasant.

Liked a good laugh, liked socialising.

Doreen was a professional singer.

She performed with a number of well-known choirs

and her beautiful Contralto voice was captured in this BBC recording.

OPERA MUSIC PLAYS

Sue Sturrock studied with Doreen at the Royal College of Music.

I will never forget Doreen, because she was a wonderfully vibrant,

flamboyant character.

OPERA MUSIC PLAYS

I have to say that you would know whether Doreen was or was

not at the singers' table the moment you stepped into the dining room,

because she would be the centre of attention.

She was funny, she was witty, she was nicely naughty,

nicely disrespectful.

But most of all, very amusing.

# Panis angelicus. #

Another singing friend, Judy Rees, shares similar memories.

Everybody knew, everybody knew Doreen.

All the orchestral players knew her, as well.

She really was that sort of person, and everybody had a word,

everybody had a laugh with Doreen.

She really was a big personality.

But after a successful career, Doreen suddenly gave up

performing and began to live an increasingly reclusive life.

She lived, I would have thought, almost an isolated...

I don't think she went very far.

She went occasionally, probably, to the bank, but I don't think

she left the house very much at all, which is dreadfully sad.

Having led an active and sociable life, Doreen sadly died alone.

In central London,

the Heir Hunters are keen to start the search for Doreen's heirs,

but first they need to try and find out how much her estate is worth.

Heir Hunters work on commission,

so the value of the estate means the difference between profit and loss.

Neil has an address for Doreen in Lewisham, and because it's a London suburb,

house prices are likely to be high.

But he needs to know if she rented her home or owned it.

Hi.

I've got a property which is freehold in SE13,

but it's not available electronically.

What do you reckon that means?

They urgently need someone on the ground who can visit

the property and make enquiries with the neighbours.

I'm going to get Bob Smith to go there.

Fingers crossed he can find something out.

The company has a network of regional Heir Hunters

spread across the country.

Each one is on standby from 7am on a Thursday morning,

and they can be called upon to make door-to-door enquiries,

collect important certificates and visit potential heirs.

Bob Smith is their South London man, so he's been told to hit the road

to see if he can find out valuable information about Doreen.

Today we are heading off to Lewisham.

Our deceased, Doreen Walker, died in 2010.

We'll be going along there, making inquiries with neighbours.

Find out what they know about the deceased and her family.

A property in South London is bound to have attracted

interest from rival heir hunters, so Bob needs to get to Lewisham fast.

But, frustratingly, he's hit rush hour.

There is a two-mile traffic queue at the moment.

We're about five miles away, but at this rate,

it could be a long time before we get there.

SAT NAV: 'Your destination is straight ahead.'

Once the roads clear, Bob makes quick time

and he arrives at Doreen's house to be greeted by a fairly grim sight.

This one here.

Unbelievable, isn't it?

Incredible.

The house is boarded up and completely overgrown.

I'm making inquiries about the lady that used to live next door.

I don't think there's anyone in here.

Bob eventually speaks to a neighbour,

and learns that Doreen did own the property.

He gets straight on the phone to give Neil the news.

Hello, Neil.

I tell you what, it is a lovely house, Neil,

but it is a little bit derelict.

But it is in a lovely location, a little bit overgrown.

Anyway, the neighbour had known her for the last 15 or 20 years.

He said that she didn't have any children.

She was a local lady, as far as he was aware.

He didn't know if she was born elsewhere or anything.

So the house itself isn't a council house?

No, no, it looks like...

He said she owned it. I asked him that, and he said, no, she owned it.

Bob's also noticed a number for the company who boarded up the house.

That notice on the corrugated iron on the front door...

'Yeah.'

..there's a telephone number.

I don't know what sort of organisation they are.

I can't get hold of any other neighbours. There's no-one answering.

'No.'

While Bob goes off to make further enquiries at the local church,

back at the office,

Neil's managed to find out more about Doreen's house,

and he's been able to pinpoint exactly when she bought the property.

Doreen owns the property, bought it in 2000.

So it's definitely worth us pursuing it.

It is a £250,000 estate.

It's now all systems go for the Heir Hunters.

Gareth, she definitely owns it,

so pull some staff on to it, as well.

With a £250,000 estate at stake,

the team must follow up any clue that could lead them to heirs.

Neil phones the company who boarded up Doreen's house.

Good morning. I wonder if you could help me.

I'm doing an inquiry about a property

which I think your shutters are on.

I'm basically trying to find out who's paying you for them

or who asked you to put them up.

Neil's wondering if they've been in touch with one of Doreen's relatives.

That was put up because of the police.

The police broke into the property on 4th March,

which is exactly the same date of death that we have for Doreen,

so obviously she was found dead.

They broke in as part of a welfare inquiry,

so, obviously, no-one has heard anything,

and no sign of anything, so they went in there.

The case has taken a sad turn. Doreen was found dead in her flat.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bob has now spoken to the vicar at the local church,

and a picture of Doreen's later years is starting to emerge.

Neil, hi, it's Bob. I actually spoke with the Reverend.

She phoned someone that she thought might have known the deceased,

and he did, he remembered her.

Apparently, her husband was the church organist.

But ten years ago, he just left a note to say that he was

leaving her, and he went to South Africa.

They're not sure whether there was actually a divorce.

This information could be crucial for the team.

If Doreen did not get divorced,

her husband will be the sole heir to her estate.

It seems the sudden end of her marriage in 2001 affected Doreen very deeply.

She was devastated.

I don't think the decline set in then,

but I think it contributed to her, sort of, withdrawing from...

well, socialising and meeting up with friends, etc.

I rarely saw her over the last ten years.

The state of the house was really quite shocking.

No idea what the inside looked like. I was never going to be invited in.

But outside, as I said before, completely overgrown.

And it was like that while she was living there.

It is just rather distressing.

In the office, the search for Doreen's heirs is gathering pace.

The team's first priority is to find out

if she and her husband got divorced.

Emily, are you doing probate?

Yes.

I've got a divorce for you to do.

Are they the first years you want?

We wanted 1995-2005.

Yeah, but the first three years first, do you want?

Emily will try and find records of a divorce,

but the team can't afford to wait for the results.

They start the search for any other living relatives.

But first they need to find records for the right Doreen Walker,

and they've found a possible birth for her in Yorkshire.

We've got a date of birth, 23rd February, 1948.

There's only one birth of a Doreen Ellen Walker,

which was her maiden name.

It's in Huddersfield, which is completely out of area.

If this birth is right, Doreen was the only child of Eric

and Doris Walker, and came from somewhere near Huddersfield.

But the neighbours in Lewisham thought Doreen was from London,

and the team are split.

Where are you up to? Do you believe this Huddersfield birth?

At the moment, yes.

If we confirm this date of birth's correct, there is only one Doreen E.

She looks like she's an only child.

Coming up, the search for heirs goes nationwide.

I'm now trying to move my guys up to South Yorkshire.

And it turns out Doreen was no ordinary singer.

She was one of the absolute stars.

It was obviously considered that she had real potential.

Most heir-hunting cases involve people who have

died in the last 20 years.

But the estate of 19th century nobleman Frederick West

was a very different story.

The search for his heirs would span six generations and unearth links

with the Royal Family and a rather famous politician.

Heir hunting firm Fraser and Fraser picked up the case after spotting

an article in the paper, and partner Charles Fraser got straight to work.

The article stated that they were looking for the beneficiaries

of Frederick West, who was the donor,

i.e., he gave land away for the purpose of a school.

Frederick West lived at Ruthin Castle in Wales,

and was a wealthy MP and landowner.

In 1844 he had decided to donate a small piece of land

so the local church could build a school.

In the middle Victorian period, there was a great

philanthropic process where they were trying to educate the masses.

In order to do that, schools were being created.

But thanks to the School Sites Act of 1841,

Frederick West's gift to the Church came with a catch.

If the school closed, then the land would go back to the original donor.

I think it was a belt-and-braces approach to try

and prevent people just giving land away for the school,

the school closing immediately and then the land being sold off.

This significant piece of small print was largely irrelevant

until 2008, when the school that had been built on the land closed down.

The plot was put up for sale,

and, by law, the proceeds would have to go to heirs of Frederick West.

The land originally given away would have been less than an acre

to comply with the legislation,

and it is hopefully being sold for somewhere in the region of £375,000.

This meant it could be a very profitable case for the Heir Hunters.

The team needed to find Frederick West's heirs,

whoever and wherever they were.

The first step was to find a copy of Frederick's will.

The actual finding of the will isn't always the most difficult part.

It's actually interpreting the will which can be very

difficult to read, decipher, and then interpret.

The will showed that Frederick West had left his entire estate

to his daughter, Charlotte Louisa West.

She in turn passed the estate down to her nephew, William,

and nieces, Georgina and Florence.

Both Georgina and Florence died without children,

so the entire estate went to their brother.

William Cornwallis-West was now a very wealthy man,

and in 1872 he married flamboyant socialite Mary Fitzpatrick.

They set up home in Ruthin Castle, and began hosting parties

for their influential friends, who included the future King Edward VII.

They were known for their high-class parties, if you like.

And because Prince Edward Albert, the future Edward VII,

used it as one of his secret haunts,

he used to bring many of his lady friends here,

including Lillie Langtry, the actress, Alice Keppel, many of his mistresses,

who may well have included members of the West family themselves as well.

Their parties were absolutely legendary.

The future king of England, Edward VII,

was one of many high society guests at Ruthin Castle.

Fun-loving aristocrats travelled across the country to enjoy Mary and

William's hospitality, which earned them the nickname the Wild Wests.

Mary Cornwallis-West,

her party trick was sliding down the huge banisters in the main hall

on a tea-tray, which apparently Edward Albert loved.

Hence the Wild West Show, the nickname that he gave them.

In between the parties, William and Mary also raised a family.

They had three children, Daisy, Constance and George,

and they were next in line to inherit the West estate.

But, surprisingly, George was written out of the will.

George was the middle one. He was the boy.

He had quite a hard life in his early days.

But, eventually, of course, he started enjoying himself,

and he really, really spent all their money.

He squandered all the proceedings of the family.

Having blown most of the family's fortune,

the 17-year-old George then caused further scandal by embarking

on affair with an American divorcee who was more than twice his age.

He became involved with Jennie Churchill.

This was reckoned to be scandalous, first of all because of the age gap,

and the two families also had really broken down their friendship,

and this, at the end of the day, did not go down well.

What's more, Jennie had a son the same age as George, and her

son was none other than the future Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Despite the controversy surrounding their relationship,

George and Jennie married in 1895.

Both families were very much against this,

and he was sent off to the Boer War,

where he met his future stepson, Winston.

Still to come, George's connection with Winston Churchill

comes in very handy for his family during the Second World War.

I believe Churchill stepped in because of the family connection.

And the search continues for living relatives of talented singer Doreen Walker.

All we have got to play with on this case is one maternal aunt.

So, things aren't looking terribly good.

Heir Hunters solve thousands of cases a year,

and millions of pounds are paid out to rightful heirs.

But thousands of cases have foxed the Heir Hunters and remain unsolved.

Could you be the heirs they've been searching for?

Could you be in line to inherit a lump sum worth hundreds,

thousands or even millions of pounds?

Estates stay on the list for up to 30 years,

and today we're focusing on three names.

Are they relatives of yours?

Sandor Alex Kiss died in Chertsey, in Surrey

on 22nd February 2005, aged 68.

If heirs aren't found, his money will go to the Government.

Did you know Suk-Kung Lickman from Leicester? She died September 2009.

Suk-Kung's maiden name was Chong, so it's likely she was of Asian origin.

So far, no one's come forward to claim her estate.

Also on our list is Crystal Hephzibah Gardner,

who was from Marsham in Norfolk.

She died in 2008, aged 71.

While the surname Gardner is quite common, Hephzibah is Hebrew,

meaning "my delight is in her".

All efforts to trace her relatives have drawn a blank.

If the names Sandor Kiss, Suk-Kung Lickman

or Crystal Hephzibah Gardner mean anything to you, or someone

you know, you could have an unexpected windfall coming your way.

At the offices of Britain's largest heir hunting firm,

Fraser & Fraser, the team are racing to find heirs to

the estate of Doreen Walker, who died in Lewisham in 2010.

Gareth, she definitely owns it, so pull some staff onto it as well.

The case is worth an estimated £250,000,

but the team are struggling to make much progress.

They've only found one potential birth for Doreen,

and its 200 miles away, in Huddersfield.

Huddersfield to Lewisham is a hugely long way.

I don't particularly like that.

I think the birth's going to be in London somewhere.

Doreen died alone in her south London home in March 2010.

Having separated from her husband in 2001, it seemed she went

from being the life and soul of the party to a virtual recluse.

Doreen was very sociable, and amusing and liked a good laugh.

Went round to parties, liked mixing, all those sort of things.

This is why it was so sad about what happened, that she just withdrew.

But this was a far cry from Doreen's earlier years.

She had worked as a professional singer, and had sung at some of the

country's most prestigious venues, including the Royal Albert Hall.

In 1966, she was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Music,

a prize that was only awarded to those with exceptional talent.

Sue Sturrock was a fellow student.

To get into the Royal College in 1968 was probably one of the most

difficult things a singer could try to do, so to be offered

a place was a huge achievement, but as Doreen was given a full scholarship,

a full open scholarship, that was a real accolade.

She was one of the absolute stars.

Doreen graduated from the Royal College of Music in 1970,

and seemed destined for great things.

She had a lovely, warm, dark sound.

And it could have been a stunning voice.

She could have been a great singer, with her personality.

It just didn't work out as it should have done.

Her potential was not fulfilled.

Although she never became a full-blown solo performer,

Doreen carved out a successful career,

singing with the BBC orchestra, and choir London Voices.

Once she appeared in our lives, she was, I can only say,

the life and soul of the party.

She had a very broad Yorkshire dialect,

and she was always in the middle of all the fun.

She was a very, very great girl to know.

Back in the office, the team desperately need more

information if they are to have any chance of finding Doreen's heirs.

Case manager Tony Pledger has been given a number

for one of Doreen's closest friends.

Could this be the breakthrough they need?

I'm ringing you with regard to the late Doreen Walker.

She was married, but I understand that her husband upped and left her.

Yeah. Do you know when they divorced, at all?

Well, we assumed that he was dead, but...

Right, OK.

And it was definitely a village in Huddersfield-ish,

not Huddersfield town, so to speak?

Tony's confirmed Doreen's place of birth, and that she was divorced.

He told me that the deceased husband had returned to South Africa,

remarried and had died in South Africa.

He told me roughly when the divorce was,

a little bit of information about the parents, and confirmed

that the deceased was an only child, so it was a little bit of headway.

Armed with this new information,

the team can finally start building Doreen's family tree,

but Neil's still surprised about the Huddersfield birth.

The first rule is that the deceased is probably born near where they passed away,

unless it's the south coast,

but we still expect them to come from the south-east.

Today, obviously, rule one has been broken,

which means that I'm now trying to move all my guys back up

to South Yorkshire.

Neil has sent one of his northern-based travelling

researchers to pick up Doreen's birth certificate.

Here you go.

And in the meantime, the team in the office are building a family tree

from information they found online.

This sheet's getting a bit crowded.

Yeah, I know. That's why I started a new one.

"Ben, Charles." What we look at there?

They soon build a picture of Doreen's family.

Her parents were Eric Walker and Doris Charlesworth.

Doreen was an only child, and so was her father, Eric,

which mean all eyes are on Doreen's mother, Doris.

Her parents were Ben and Ellen Charlesworth, and the team

are hoping they had other children who may lead them to heirs.

The family on the Charlesworth side come from a small village

called Honley, near Huddersfield.

We know that Ben, the grandfather deceased on the Charlesworth

side, was certainly living in that village in 1911,

and then when he died, he was still living there, so there's

a potential chance that some family are still living in the village.

These are simply some telephone numbers of Charlesworths

living in that village.

There may be Charlesworths living in the right village,

but are they the same family?

If they are, they could be Doreen's cousins,

and heirs to her £250,000 estate.

Hello, sorry to trouble you. My name's Tony Pledger.

We specialise in tracing missing heirs,

and we were researching into the family of somebody who died recently in London,

who was born in the village of Honley,

and basically, their mother was a Doris Charlesworth.

So, if there's nobody in your Charlesworth family that's

ever heard of a Doris Charlesworth who married an Eric Walker,

then I'm sorry to have troubled you.

OK, then.

No, that's OK. Thanks ever so. Thanks, bye.

Tony speaks to all the Charlesworths he can,

and not a single one of them has heard of Doreen's mother, Doris.

So, things aren't looking terribly good.

As Doreen had no children herself, the team are running out of options.

Then, the researchers make a breakthrough.

They find that Doris had a sister called Annie,

who is Doreen's paternal aunt.

If Annie had children,

they'll be the cousins the team have been searching for.

But Gareth is doubtful.

All we've got to play with on this case is one maternal aunt who,

unfortunately, from our point of view, she did get married,

but she didn't have any children that we know of at the moment,

so our last hope is that maybe she adopted a child.

We are waiting for a probate to come back.

When that comes back, that should tell us.

But no heirs as yet.

It doesn't look like Annie had children.

But Gareth's refusing to give up.

He's asked for a copy of Annie's will, to see if it mentions

any children or other relatives that the team haven't found.

We've just seen the will of Annie Oldham,

who, in her will, she's mentioned the deceased,

so we know it's definitely the right family,

but she's also mentioned an Anne, who she's described as a niece.

We need to work out where she fits in.

This could be the last roll of the dice.

Is Anne the daughter of an aunt or uncle they don't know about,

and the last remaining blood relative of Doreen Walker?

She, as I said, describes her niece as Anne.

Her parents, no matter what we do, they're always going to come from him.

It's a disaster for the team.

Anne is a niece through Annie's husband.

She's no relation to Doreen, and cannot inherit her estate.

The team have exhausted every avenue of research, and must admit defeat.

Unfortunately, it looks as though we're not really going to be

able to make much progress on this estate.

Not through lack of trying, I don't think, but really through lack

of family, as from what we found, the father was an only child, the

mother had a single sister who got married, but it doesn't look like

they had any children, so as far as we're concerned, it's a dead case.

It's a case with no living beneficiaries on it.

Obviously, if this case came from Scotland,

we could have gone a generation further

back before we came down and found beneficiaries, but we can't.

It's an English estate,

so it's money which is going to the Treasury.

Doreen may not have any heirs, but her larger-than-life

personality and remarkable voice have left a lasting legacy.

I think she'd want us all to remember the very best of her singing,

and the very best of her performances, and the happy

memories that her friends have, and those of us who remember her from

more of a distance have of her as such a vibrant

and huge human being.

As the team's drawn a blank, it seems unlikely anyone will

ever come forward to claim Doreen's estate, estimated at £250,000,

and if it's not claimed by 2040, the money will go to the government.

In 2008, Heir Hunter Charles Fraser began the search for heirs to

a former school site worth an estimated £375,000.

The school was to be demolished, and an 1841 law meant the land it

was built on had to be returned to the family of its original owner,

19th century nobleman, Frederick West.

By tracing his descendants, the Heir Hunters had already uncovered

a story of extraordinary wealth and royal connections.

These types of cases are often very exciting.

The families that we are dealing with are often quite

different to the ordinary intestacy cases.

Frederick's great-great-grandson, George Cornwallis West,

had caused a scandal and been written out of the family will,

so the heir hunters were now focused on his two sisters,

Constance and Daisy.

Mary leaves her estate to her two daughters,

she leaves her property in Cannes to her daughter, Constance,

in order that she may have a residence near to her sister,

Mary Teresa Olivia, Princess of Pless.

So, at that stage, we knew that not only had one daughter married

very well, into the Westminster family,

the other daughter had also married into royalty of some sort.

It was obvious that we were now dealing with quite wealthy families,

of, certainly, upper and higher class in British society,

and indeed, German nobility and royalty, so it was all very exciting.

We didn't know where we were going to end up.

First they turned to Daisy, and her story was yet another

remarkable chapter in the West family history.

We didn't know much about her initially, so we had to do quite

a lot of research to establish who she was and what happened to her,

and the story of her life was actually quite fascinating, but tragic.

Because Daisy's brother, George, had squandered the family fortune,

her mother, Mary, also known as Patsy,

was keen to find a wealthy suitor, and who better than a German prince?

Patsy wanted to make sure that her daughter married well, and she

was on the lookout on the continent,

and the Prince of Pless came along,

and she decided he would be the one, and he was not really, really very

pleased with this, because he came to London to meet another young lady,

who, in fact, he lost, but at the end of the day, he did marry Daisy.

The newlyweds moved to the enormous Furstenstein Castle

in the Prussian town of Pless.

The castle looked like the setting of a fairytale,

but Daisy and the Prince of Pless had married for convenience,

and there was no happy ending.

As far as their marriage was concerned,

neither Daisy or the Prince of Pless really, really wanted to be together,

and it was really forced on them, but friends and family

and the Royal family did in fact try to help it out.

They gradually got to know each other a bit better.

Things got worse when the Pless family fell on hard times.

Daisy moved from the castle to the gatehouse,

and the couple eventually divorced.

Daisy, the Princess of Pless, died in 1943.

The Pless family money went, because of the way the governments

of both Poland and Germany took over the companies after the war.

The money went, the money went, she became ill, and by that time

there was no money left to look after her, and she depended on friends.

Unfortunately, she developed MS, and that really,

really brought on a slow, slow death to her.

In London, the Heir Hunters were trying to find the rightful

beneficiaries of a peace of land, donated to make a school

by Daisy's great-grandfather, Frederick West.

Charles's next move was to see if Daisy had left a will.

Finding the will for the Princess was difficult

for a whole host of reasons.

There was obviously the boundary changes, going from Germany and Poland,

and also the fact that she died in poverty.

It was actually so difficult,

we haven't actually been able to trace any will for her at all.

This meant looking for Daisy's blood relatives,

and they quickly learnt that Daisy and the Prince of Pless had

had three sons, Hansel, Alexander and Bolko.

The oldest, Hansel, who was also known as Henry, had died,

but in his will, the only beneficiary was an ex-wife who was still alive.

The team had found their first heir through a long line of inheritance.

He left the entirety of his estate to his ex-wife, Lady Ashtown.

In relation to the original donor, the Honourable Frederick West,

Lady Ashtown has no blood relationship at all.

She's the ex-wife of a very distant relative of his.

Lady Ashtown lives in London, and was stunned to hear she was in line

to inherit from her ex-husband's great-great-grandfather.

I mean, I knew there was a lot of land,

or had been a lot of land in Wales, but I didn't know much about it.

We never talked about it.

So I didn't really expect it to come back, as it were.

Funny how things happen so many years later, isn't it?

Although Lady Ashtown and Henry Pless divorced,

they remained on good terms.

He was one of the kindest people I've ever known.

I never, in 30 plus years,

I never saw him irritated or badtempered.

What more can I say? He was a saint, I think.

Henry had come to England from Prussia in the 1930s,

but when war broke out, he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Because he was German, although he was living in England

and had English relations,

like the Duke of Westminster was his uncle,

he was popped into Brixton Prison,

and there they kept him for, I think it was nearly three years.

And then, one day, the Prison Governor came and said,

"I am so sorry.

"This has been a frightful mistake. You should never have been here.

"You must leave as soon as possible."

It seems that Henry was released from prison because Winston Churchill

was the stepson of George Cornwallis-West, Henry's uncle.

I believe Churchill stepped in because of the family connection.

He had tried other ways, but eventually, he asked a question in Parliament.

Soon afterwards, Hansel was released.

For Charles and his team, the search for heirs to a £375,000

plot of land was starting to come good.

They'd found that another of Daisy's sons, Bolko,

had three children who were also heirs.

They now turn their attention to Daisy's sister, Constance,

the Duchess of Westminster.

Would her branch of the family lead to even more heirs?

Initially, I found it quite surprising that she'd left her

estate to her companion, and not to any of her children,

which, in 1970, amounted to just under £30,000.

Quite a lot of money at the time.

The beneficiary named in Constance's will was Nora Gillespie,

and she had worked for the Duchess for over 40 years.

Nora's godson, Peter Sykes, has letters from the Duchess which date

back to 1928, when she was looking for someone to manage her estate.

"Dear Miss Wills," and this is July 4th, 1928.

"Dear Miss Wills. I'm writing to ask you to do me a favour.

"If by chance you hear of a nice Lady," with a capital L,

"who wants a comfortable home and is a really capable Manager,

"do let me know as I'm looking out for one to entirely run this house for me.

"Someone about 28 or 30, but she must be a Lady.

"Also, she must have had some experience of the Type,"

with a capital T, "of work required."

At just 22 years of age,

Nora Gillespie wasn't the ideal candidate.

The Duchess was very doubtful that such a young person could

rule the household in the way that she wanted,

but evidently she convinced her, and in 1928, she took the job

and was there until the Duchess died in 1970.

Constance rewarded Nora's loyalty by naming her as the sole

beneficiary to her estate.

Nora died 22 years later, in 1992, and she left half of her estate,

which had come from the West family, to her godson, Peter.

It sort of started me delving back into the history

and discovering, if you like, the Cornwallis-Wests of Ruthin,

and some of it has been quite fascinating.

The parties they used to go to,

yes, and also the Plesses.

Princess Daisy, from what I've read since, can make the eyes water, really.

Although Peter had no blood link to the West family, he was now an heir

to a piece of land donated in 1844, and now worth an estimated £375,000.

How do I feel about inheriting from this family which isn't my family?

I feel quite pleased, actually!

After an epic heir hunt that has spanned six generations,

Charles Fraser is pleased to be able to wrap up a truly remarkable case.

We've established that the majority of the heirs aren't blood relatives,

and we've also gained a delightful insight into some of these families,

some of these quite wealthy families, and how they lead their lives.

Some of the details in their wills just don't appear in ordinary people's wills.

Fraser and Fraser managed to trace nine heirs who will all

share in the six-figure proceeds from the sale of the school.

If you would like advice about building your family tree or

making a will, go to:

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