Young/Davenport Heir Hunters

Heir Hunters specialise in tracking down people entitled to money from someone who has died.

They hand over thousands of pounds to family members who had no idea they were in line to inherit.

-We didn't know he still existed.

-Their work involves painstaking investigation.

Uncle Stanley. You knew that name instantly.

But it can bring back long-forgotten family memories.

My mother left me this bible. I've kept it all these years.

Most of all, though, their work is about giving people news of an unexpected windfall.

Could the Heir Hunters be knocking at your door?

Coming up: it's all in a name.

We're struggling slightly with the surname. Young is very common.

The Heir Hunters are led down a blind alley in the search for relatives of a London man.

Hang on a minute. That's wrong.

The pioneering aircraft designer whose planes transported spies during World War Two.

To actually see and touch an aircraft he was responsible for

was something special.

Plus how you could be entitled to inherit unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

Thursday morning in London. Overnight, the Treasury's Bona Vacantia division

has published its latest list of unclaimed estates.

One name in particular has caught the eye at Fraser and Fraser

-and researcher Debbie is already hard at work.

-I'm working on the job of Wilfred Young.

Otherwise Wilfred S Young.

The team know that Wilfred Young was born in Islington in 1921,

but although they started work early this morning, for boss Neil it looks a rather tricky case.

We're struggling slightly with the surname. Young is very common.

It's not an easy task for anyone. It's not an easy task for us and we do it every day of the week.

It's tricky, it's a challenge, but that's what research is.

Keen to get ahead of other competing firms, the Heir Hunters have already spoken to a neighbour

and established that Wilfred was a bachelor who never had children.

We wonder if you're connected to this family.

Now they're trawling marriage and birth records to see if he had any brothers or sisters,

but as Young is such a common name, the search is throwing up a myriad of possibilities.

Wilfred Young died in May, 2011, in Camden, London.

He was 89 years old.

To his friends, like neighbour Linda Cummings, he was known by his middle name of Stanley.

I knew Stanley for about 14 years. He lived here and he was very friendly.

We often helped him out. We supplied him with clothes and did the odd bit of laundry.

Because he always used to go out in these sandals with no toes or anything.

He was just Stanley. That was him.

A quiet and reserved man, Stanley liked his routine.

You knew at 9 o'clock when the door slammed where he was going - off to the pub for his couple of pints.

He used to collect the glasses in the tavern.

Towards the end of his life, Stanley spent more time alone at home,

but was still keen to keep his mind active.

He loved crosswords and word searches. He'd sit for hours with them. He'd get a bit annoyed

if he couldn't finish it, but he really did love to do them. He was such a nice guy.

Despite the fact that Stanley lived in a small rented flat and appeared to have few possessions,

his estate is estimated to be worth around £20,000.

For the Heir Hunters, who work for a pre-agreed percentage,

it's a case worth pursuing, but progress is slow.

Researcher Dan has been drafted in to help out.

Unfortunately, like everyone else, we've come to a bit of a dead end. Young's quite a common name.

We've just got to keep looking, basically, and hope something else turns up.

The team want to establish whether Stanley had any brothers or sisters.

They urgently need to rule out some of the many permutations of Young births, marriages and deaths.

I've been going through and speculatively looking at marriages.

And we've just disproved yet another one.

Unfortunately.

Determined to stay ahead of the competition, Ben sends Eisha to the Islington Register Office

to collect birth and marriage certificates for people who could be Stanley's parents and siblings.

-If you can get that marriage...

-I'll write it down. I'll ask.

If you just get them to confirm Wilfred.

I'll make a list of the births to get from Islington.

Hopefully, we'll be lucky and they'll do them.

As Eisha heads off to Islington, travelling Heir Hunter Ewart Lindsay waits on standby.

He's one of the company's flying squad of senior researchers,

willing to go wherever the case takes them in the search for heirs.

It's their job to canvass neighbours, collect certificates and, hopefully, sign up heirs.

Sometimes it can be quite tricky finding people.

We know our job, so it does become quite easy after a while.

Ewart's been told by the office to head towards Islington because that's where Stanley was born.

It's likely his siblings were born there, too, and they or their descendants could still be here.

Essex Road. It's all happening in Islington.

In the office, Ben has drawn up a speculative family tree.

He thinks he's found a brother called Douglas Young and other siblings,

but he needs written proof.

We're still waiting for certificates from Islington. The sheer volume of records for Young is unbelievable.

It's a tense wait for Ben. It's likely that other heir hunting firms are also working this case,

so time is of the essence.

Hello, Eisha.

Finally, he gets the call he's been waiting for. Researcher Eisha has managed to get the certificates

and she has crucial information.

Whoa! Hang on. That's wrong, then.

The Douglas Young Ben thought was Stanley's brother is, in fact, his father.

Born in 1891, Douglas married Stanley's mother Ethel Taylor in 1914.

Records show that he had an interesting job working on London's busy Underground network.

Working for the Underground, for London Transport, tended to be something that was passed down

from father to son at one time.

And it was a job that you could have for life if you wanted or you could work your way up.

On Stanley's birth certificate, Douglas's occupation is listed as a railway gateman.

It was an often arduous and time-consuming job, manning gates to let people on and off the train.

You have a uniform and you have free travel and everything else,

so it was a responsible and respectable job.

In the rush hour, you could imagine it was really quite a problem letting people off and then on.

It meant that every train had to have a number of gatemen, one between each coach,

and it took a long time to get people on and off.

In the 1920s, the introduction of automatic doors meant the gatemen's job became obsolete,

freeing up Douglas to go onto bigger and better things.

We know that by 1943, in the middle of the war, Douglas was a station manager for London Transport.

He'd moved up the system considerably.

From mid-1940, the Blitz led to the use of many Underground stations as air raid shelters.

Thousands of people crowded the Underground, often sleeping there overnight to escape the bombing.

It was very much the working classes of London, particularly people from the East End,

who'd been bombed out of their homes, who invaded the Tube, against official advice,

and stayed down there and had to live in the Tube.

They thought it was probably the safest place to be.

It was Douglas's responsibility to make sure the station operated as normally as possible.

The trains had to come through the station as usual,

even though people would have been sheltering on the platforms.

In the early days, they were just hunkering down on the platforms while trains came in.

They marked out a line on the middle of the platform

to separate out the passengers from the shelterers.

Douglas was likely to have had more than one station under his control.

It was a tough and often perilous job.

A lot of London Transport staff were killed or injured during the war.

Sloane Square station, for example, had a direct hit in 1940

and a lot of people were killed.

It was a responsible job, but also a tough, stressful job.

Their contribution to the war effort, if you like, was just as serious as anybody else's.

The search for heirs to Stanley's £20,000 estate is gathering momentum.

Now the team have managed to identify his parents and have birth and marriage certificates,

case manager Ben is able to clear up some initial mistakes.

The potential births that we had for siblings of the deceased...

Out of one, two, three, four, five, six, we know that four are definitely wrong.

The reason we know that is the mother's name's different, so the only sibling, full blood,

that we've located is Jessie Ethel Young.

After going down several blind alleys, the team have managed to establish

that Stanley had a sister called Jessie, but death records show she died a spinster in 2002.

The Heir Hunters think it's likely that Stanley had other siblings

and so potentially some nieces and nephews,

but will they get to them ahead of the competition?

Michael Young? It's concerning an unclaimed estate of someone dying without leaving a will. Your uncle.

Finding and signing up heirs is always the main aim for the Heir Hunters,

but to be able to uncover some fascinating family history is always a welcome bonus.

That was the case with Kathleen Mary Davenport, who died in 2011.

As Kathleen didn't leave a will, her estate was advertised by the Treasury solicitor.

Fraser and Fraser case manager Dave Slee immediately spotted its potential.

By obtaining a copy of the death certificate, we were able to establish

that Kathleen was resident in a nursing home prior to her death.

However, prior to that, electoral registers suggested she owned her own property in Richmond, Surrey.

From our point of view, that's quite exciting because Richmond is an affluent suburb of London

where the rich and famous live and we were hoping that her property was worth a lot of money.

Kathleen Davenport passed away on July 26th, 2011, one month after her 90th birthday.

She spent her last days at a care home near London,

but she had lived a full and exciting life. To her friends, like Antony Hornyold,

Kathleen was always known as Kate.

I met Kate when we both arrived in Accra

to work for the British High Commission in Ghana.

Since then, I've known her for the remainder of her life, which was 49 years.

She was an attractive and intelligent person,

quite outgoing, particularly on social occasions.

After the end of the Second World War, Kathleen married a man who worked for the Colonial Office.

In 1949, he was posted to Ghana and Kathleen went with him.

It was to be the beginning of a lifelong love affair with this vibrant West African nation.

She loved Ghana and the Ghanaians and she was very good with them

and they liked her very much, too.

In 1957, Kathleen's marriage broke up and she moved back to Britain.

She worked for several years as a secretary in London, but always longed to go back to Africa.

In 1962, she got her chance.

She saw an advertisement by the Commonwealth Relations Office

for secretaries needed at the High Commission in Accra.

And, having loved Ghana, she applied for it and got the job.

When I think of Kate, I think of a person with a great enthusiasm for life, for people,

for animals, birds and flowers.

And someone with a warm and attractive personality.

After many years abroad, Kathleen eventually moved back to the UK and set up home in Richmond.

For Heir Hunter Dave Slee, this was an obvious starting point

to try to find out more about Kathleen and her family tree.

Once we knew the address for Kathleen, one of my colleagues went to the flats and door-knocked,

and asked the neighbours what they knew about her. We got really lucky with the inquiry.

It would appear that the neighbours and the deceased had all moved in at the same time

so they'd known her for a number of years.

Kathleen's neighbours were able to give Dave a lot of crucial information,

including the fact that she was divorced and had no children.

Having found out at this point that her estate was worth around £22,000, the next step

was to find out if Kathleen had any brothers or sisters.

Records showed that Kathleen was born in 1921

and that her parents, Arthur Davenport and Agnes Thorn, had married in 1917.

A thorough search of birth records indicated that she was the only child born to that marriage.

Her mother died in 1937 and her father subsequently remarried, but there were no children there.

So there was neither full-blood near kin or half-blood near kin.

With no siblings in line to inherit, Dave had to focus on finding aunts, uncles and cousins.

And when he started looking into Kathleen's father's family,

he stumbled across some interesting information.

Kathleen's father, Arthur Davenport, was born in 1891 in Sheffield, south Yorkshire.

A check of the 1911 Census showed that he was living with his parents.

At that time he was 19 and he was an apprentice engineer.

On Kathleen's 1946 marriage certificate, her father's occupation was listed as aircraft designer

and further investigations revealed that he had worked for one of the most important aviation companies

in British history.

Westland Aircraft was formed in 1915 at Yeovil in Somerset.

At first it built aircraft under licence for other manufacturers,

but before long the company began to design and produce its own planes.

Westlands, by the time the Second World War came around, were a major aircraft producer.

They built army aircraft, the Wapiti.

And they had several designs they were working on.

Arthur Davenport had been with Westland since the very beginning,

starting off as chief draughtsman at the age of 24.

He was involved in the design aspect of the company, all the way through until post-Second World War.

So he was a very important employee and one who progressed eventually to become Chief Designer

and Chief Technical Officer.

In the 1930s, Arthur became involved in designing what was to become an iconic British military aircraft,

the Lysander. It was to play a critical role in the Second World War.

The Lysander's probably most famous for its role with the SOE, the Special Operations Executive,

where they would fly out of airfields in Britain with spies and equipment on board, radios,

explosives, and they would land in a field in occupied Europe

and drop off those agents and equipment to the Resistance.

The fact that Kathleen Davenport's father had such a prominent job

was a huge bonus for Heir Hunter Dave Slee.

We were told that Arthur Davenport, Kathleen's father, was an aircraft designer,

so we went immediately onto the internet and checked this out and we found a lot of information

that was really helpful for our investigations.

By looking at census records, Dave found out that, like his daughter Kathleen, Arthur was an only child.

From our point of view, this is worrying. This is one side of the family with no heirs at all.

If it's the same on the mother's side and she's an only child, end of story. There's no heirs.

With her father's side of the family a dead end, everything now rested on whether Kathleen's mother,

Agnes Thorn, had any brothers or sisters.

If she was an only child, as well as the deceased's father,

this would mean there would be no heirs entitled whatsoever.

If this was the case, Kathleen's £22,000 estate would end up in the Government's coffers,

but a search of marriage and birth records threw up a glimmer of hope.

It was a real relief for us to discover that the deceased's mother was one of nine children.

This meant there's every likelihood that there would be descendants alive entitled to Kathleen's estate.

But it still wasn't plain sailing for the Heir Hunters.

Knowing there's eight siblings to the deceased's mother,

we've now got to individually check each of those stems

and we quickly whittled down to find that, in fact, six of those stems died out with no children,

so we're really panicking now that there's less and less heirs likely to be entitled.

And as the search progressed, there were more surprises in store.

There's nothing worse than doing all the work on a case, paying out

and six months down the line someone shows us a will.

Thousands of rightful beneficiaries are tracked down by the Heir Hunters every year,

but not all cases can be cracked. There are thousands of estates on the Bona Vacantia list

that have eluded the Heir Hunters and remain unsolved.

To claim the estate of someone who's died intestate,

you need to trace your relationship in a direct line from the deceased person's grandparents.

They need to supply us with certificates of birth, death and marriage and identity documents.

Today we focus on two cases that are yet to be solved.

Could you be the beneficiary?

Golda Samuels died in Homerton, East London, on 18th November, 1999.

Research shows that Golda was born in 1918 to Jewish parents Maurice and Rose Samuels,

who were originally from Russia.

The Heir Hunters believe Golda also had a relative called Max Samuels who died in New York

and may have been an uncle, but so far efforts to trace living relatives have failed.

Did you know Golda? Are you the relative Heir Hunters are looking for?

Next is the case of Edgar Arthur Guest who died on 1st March, 2005, in East Dulwich in London.

The majority of people with the surname Guest live in the Midlands,

so although Edgar died in London, it's possible he came from another part of the UK.

Perhaps you have the answers that could help solve this case. Perhaps you're a relative of Edgar.

Edgar and Golda's estates remain unclaimed and if no one comes forward,

their money will go to the Government.

If it belongs to someone else, we simply don't want it.

Here are those names again. Golda Samuels and Edgar Arthur Guest.

If you're one of their relatives, you could have a windfall coming your way.

Thursday morning at the offices of Fraser and Fraser

and the team is on a desperate chase to solve the case of Wilfred Stanley Young, but it's not an easy task.

It's a bit in the air at the moment. It's a common name and we're not sure if we've got the right birth.

They're working out several avenues.

Until we get something to prove we're on the right track,

it's just doing a lot of work and hopefully something comes of it.

After several false starts, the team has managed to establish that Wilfred Stanley Young

had a sister called Jessie, who died a spinster in 2002.

Case manager Ben Cornish has a hunch there are more siblings, although so far he's not found them.

Anyone else got anything good?

No? Got anything good?

Wilfred Young died in London in 2011 aged 89.

He was known to his friends by his middle name of Stanley.

Stanley lived downstairs in the flats where I live.

He was a bit lonely and used to shuffle about, come down the landing.

He'd be coming out just as I did and he'd say hello in the mornings.

And that's how I met Stanley.

Stanley had, at one time, been a well-known face at his local pub,

but as he got older, he grew more introverted.

He never really seemed to speak and have a conversation.

He seemed to permanently be out there to greet you going to work.

I think he was looking for a bit of company, but he didn't have much to say.

Sadly, a burglary at his home left him even more reclusive.

I know he was in the services because he had a lot of medals.

He was very proud of them and when he got burgled, he was bitterly upset and didn't want to go out.

He was frightened of losing the little bits he did have.

Just the big sofa that he had and big piles of crossword books because that was his hobby.

-In the office, there's been a breakthrough.

-This has our deceased on there.

Jessie, we know she dies a spinster.

The Heir Hunters have found Stanley on the 1949 Electoral Register,

living at an address in Holloway, North London, together with his parents and at least one sibling.

There's a Gordon mentioned with the family. It gives us an address.

We've just checked that and there's still a Young family living there up until quite recently.

We're still not sure if Gordon is a sibling of the deceased. We need to ask a few questions.

A further search of birth, marriage and death records reveals that Gordon has now passed away,

but it appears he did marry and have at least one child, Michael.

If the information is correct, he'd be Stanley's nephew and an heir to his estate.

Ben thinks he's found an address for Michael in Islington and wastes no time in mobilising

travelling researcher Ewart Lindsay.

-'Hi, Ewart.'

-Hi, Ben.

We've got a potential heir, born in 1948. Potentially a nephew of the deceased.

Ewart heads straight for the address and, without making an appointment, goes to see if Michael is in.

Will this be the first heir on this very frustrating case?

Michael Young? It's concerning an unclaimed estate of someone dying without leaving a will. Your uncle.

To make sure he's got the right person, Ewart checks the research against information from Michael.

-What's your occupation?

-Last occupation, I was a packer/loader.

-Have you been married?

-Yes, divorced.

The office got it right. Michael is the son of Stanley's older brother, Gordon.

He hasn't seen his uncle for more than 30 years.

We always called him Uncle Stan. That was all.

I mean, he was a friendly guy as I remember him.

When we was kids, he often used to pop round.

It's a great result for the Heir Hunters.

Mr Young, he's signed up with us, that's pretty good. He was one of eight children.

He's given me all the details of his siblings. He didn't know much about his aunt and uncle. It's OK.

And back in the office, the team is making great strides in the search for Stanley's other heirs.

-What's going on?

-Can we find her? She might actually still be alive.

The team has been able to establish that as well as Gordon and Jessie, Stanley had one other sibling -

his younger brother Leonard.

Although he's long since passed away, Leonard's three grandchildren will be entitled to a share

in Stanley's estate.

Ben's managed to make contact with all of them and is hopeful they'll sign up with the company,

but there's still work to do before he can wrap up this case.

The team has to trace Michael Young's seven brothers and sisters.

They're Stanley's nieces and nephews and heirs to his estate.

It's the call Ben has been waiting for - Michael's sister and Stanley's niece, Pauline.

We're working on the estate of a gentleman, Wilfred Stanley Young.

Uncle Stanley. You knew that name instantly.

He's hoping Pauline can furnish him with details that could help solve this tricky case.

She has confirmed the whole family. To get an actual niece of the deceased who knows the family

is great. She's confirmed everything we've got.

Pauline tells Ben that her father Gordon was Stanley's older brother.

He and his wife Beatrice had eight children. Seven of them, including Pauline and Michael,

are heirs to their Uncle Stanley's estate. One of them, Lynn, has passed away,

so her two children will inherit her share.

After a difficult start with a very common surname,

the final piece of the puzzle has now slotted into place.

The Heir Hunters are confident they've found all 11 beneficiaries to Stanley's estate.

And boss Neil is pleased.

It's a case which we've had to work to solve. We've gone down lots of wrong avenues

and had to think outside the box. That has enabled us to find near kin.

Ben's worked pretty well. It's a £20,000 estate.

So we're limiting on the edge of whether it's financially viable for us to work.

Being able to find near kin in just one day of research

certainly makes it viable for us to finish off.

A couple of weeks after she helped fill in the gaps for the Heir Hunters,

Stanley's niece Pauline is meeting up with her older brother Keith, who is also in line to inherit.

Together they're sharing fond memories of the man they knew as Uncle Stan.

Stanley was, like, really easygoing and nothing seemed to bother him.

You'd never see him get worked up about anything. He just took days as they came, took life as it come.

Up until the age of five, Keith lived in the same house as Stanley and the rest of the young family.

He remembers his uncle as a quiet but quirky character.

-He used to have a loom. He used to make all these scarves and things.

-I can't imagine him making scarves.

We used to get Christmas presents, a scarf he'd made on his loom.

I used to see him regularly of a morning going out on his scooter.

This weird little scooter it was. Like a souped-up hair dryer.

He used to just potter along and disappear in the distance on it.

-Did he always wear sandals then as well?

-As far as I can remember, he wore sandals all his life!

Pauline hadn't seen Stanley since her wedding day 33 years ago,

but Keith had been in contact more recently.

I was quite sad to think that he passed away and we didn't even know that he still existed.

That's the bit that gets me. Stanley is gone and we didn't even know that Stanley was still alive.

I think it's sad that he's died on his own, with none of us knowing.

To me, it's sad that he had no one with him when he died.

-A really sweet person. So inoffensive.

-Yeah.

-A gentle giant.

-Yeah. In sandals.

-In sandals, yeah!

In London, the Heir Hunters were trying to find beneficiaries to the £22,000 estate

of Kathleen Davenport, who died in 2011.

As a secretary for the British High Commission,

Kathleen had spent many years in Ghana, but she'd started her working life closer to home.

When the war came, she joined the WAAFs. She must have done quite well because she got a commission.

She must have shown leadership qualities and intelligence.

The WAAFs were members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.

Established at the start of WWII,

it grew from 1,700 members to 180,000 by 1943.

Engaged in 15 types of duty, from catering to maintaining aircraft

and controlling planes in operations rooms, WAAFs were a vital part of the war effort.

By joining them, Kathleen was perhaps following in the footsteps of her father, Arthur Davenport,

a well-known aircraft designer.

Her father was the designer of the Lysander aircraft,

very highly respected in that field.

The WAAFs reformed as the Women's Royal Air Force in 1949

and fully integrated into the RAF in 1994. And it was here

that Kathleen turned when she needed help in later life.

The RAF Benevolent Fund helped Kate buy a flat on Richmond Hill. It was a lovely flat.

There were beautiful views all round and Kate became very fond of the area

and walked a lot. She also had a small dog.

I think she had a happy time in Richmond.

The search for beneficiaries to Kathleen's £22,000 estate

was proving tough for Heir Hunter Dave Slee.

Kathleen was an only child, divorced with no children of her own.

Her father, Arthur, had no siblings so there were no heirs on that side of the family.

Her mother, Agnes, did have eight brothers and sisters, but six died without having any children.

The remaining two, Rosetta and Elma, were his last hope for finding heirs.

Although we were whittling down each stem to find that there were no descendants,

we eventually found that there were two stems that had descendants alive.

A check of marriage and birth records revealed that Agnes' older sister Rosetta married

and had three children, Kathleen's first cousins - Olive, Margaret and Phyllis.

Although they've long since passed away, two of the cousins had children themselves.

Dave had found his first heirs to Kathleen's estate.

We're really relieved now. We've got no paternal heirs.

We had a huge maternal family that was whittling down and eventually got heirs on two stems.

We were very, very relieved.

The next step was to contact the heirs to tell them about their possible inheritance.

Dave began with Margaret's older daughter, Valerie, Kathleen's first cousin once removed.

I met Kathleen when I was younger.

Kathleen, I believe, moved to Salisbury. I moved to Bournemouth when I was 19.

So we lost touch.

Mother used to talk about her. I believe she's in some family photographs,

but because of the distance we weren't that close.

Although their families didn't remain in contact, it seems they had one thing in common -

just like Kathleen's father, Arthur, Valerie's father Leslie spent much of his working life

at Westland Aircraft.

My father was working in the tool room in 1938.

It was then called Petters. He used to do the electrics on the planes.

That's my father, Leslie Stark, in the tool room.

And there he is at the machine that he often used.

Contacting Valerie first was to turn out to be a huge stroke of luck for the Heir Hunters.

Valerie was really helpful to us because she was able to confirm the heirs descending from one stem,

her grandmother, Rosetta.

Also she had a family bible, which was crucial.

That enabled us to confirm with the information in it

all the aunts and uncles of Kathleen, the deceased, on the maternal family.

Written by Kathleen's grandparents, the family bible lists the full names and dates of birth

of all of their nine children, including Kathleen's mother, Agnes, and Valerie's grandmother, Rosetta.

My mother left me this bible. I've kept it all these years.

It's a family heirloom so I shall always treasure it and I hope to pass it on to my daughter.

The information in the family bible, coupled with his own research,

led Dave to his next heir - Valerie's cousin, Richard.

I think when the Heir Hunters first made contact with me to a degree I was puzzled.

I knew the surname Davenport, I didn't know Kathleen.

So it was quite a mystery.

Keen to know more, Richard conducted his own online research.

All I did was to explore what I could find on the internet.

There was a little bit about Arthur Davenport.

Until the Heir Hunters tracked her down, Valerie had no idea that by working for Westland,

her father had much in common with Kathleen's father, Arthur Davenport.

Both she and her cousin, Richard, are keen to know more about their family's links with aviation,

so today they've come to the Shuttleworth aeronautical collection in Bedfordshire

-to meet chief engineer Jean-Michel Munn.

-Hello. Jean Munn.

They want to see first-hand how his work on the Lysander made Arthur's name as a pioneer of aviation.

Well, this is what I wanted to show you.

A Westland Lysander, which, of course, is one of Arthur Davenport's designs.

One of the interesting features of this aircraft is the slats and flaps

which are all out and down at the moment.

Uniquely, they would deploy completely automatically.

So as they come out, they draw the flaps down and so the wing alters shape

-according to the speed the aeroplane flies at.

-Oh, I see.

Arthur's wing design enabled the Lysander to fly incredibly slowly without stalling or losing control.

It could land almost anywhere because it needed hardly any space to slow down.

This made it perfect for the job of dropping spies into Nazi-occupied France under cover of night,

as pilots had to land wherever they could, usually in small fields marked out by the Resistance.

Other features you'll see are the huge undercarriage, massive wheels,

made for landing on rough, unprepared fields. And also the position the pilot sits in.

He's got an excellent field of view. He can see over the nose for landing.

What were the features Arthur was involved in designing?

Well, he had overall control of the design team,

so he would have been involved in all aspects and working with the individual guys under him.

-He would control the whole...

-From start to finish?

-Yes.

It's been a rewarding trip for the cousins. At the end of their tour of the museum,

they take a moment to reflect on what they've learned.

It's been a wonderful experience to discover about a distant relation

who I only actually knew by name,

although coming from Yeovil I knew his connection with Westland.

But to actually see and touch an aircraft he was responsible for was something special.

Absolutely marvellous. Very proud.

But there's a final twist in the tale of Kathleen Davenport's unclaimed estate.

The team has spent weeks tracking down all seven heirs,

but now partner Neil has received some very surprising news.

It's about 3 or 4 months since we've finished the research on this case.

And there's been some major developments. We've located a will.

This will, obviously, takes priority to everything we've done.

The beneficiaries we've already found will no longer be entitled.

Kathleen had left her entire estate to the charity which had helped her through hard times,

the RAF Benevolent Fund.

For Kathleen's relatives, the money is now in the right hands.

When we first heard from the Heir Hunters that there was a likelihood that we would have a windfall

of an undetermined amount, well, we were quite pleased, obviously.

But as it turns out, it wasn't to be. I think we were quite pleased

that Kathleen Davenport's money has actually gone to somewhere she wanted it to go.

The expenses we have encountered is obviously the staff working on this case,

which we still have to pay, the certificates we purchased,

the time going out to see the beneficiaries. It's money we're not going to be able to recover,

so finding a will, it's good for the estate. It's what the deceased wanted.

But from Frasers' point of view, it's very expensive.

For the RAF Benevolent Fund, however, it's a welcome windfall.

It means RAF service personnel, past and present, will benefit from the legacy

of this great aviating family.

If you would like advice about building a family tree or making a will, go to:

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