A black Kia is still parked outside the bungalow once occupied by Val Taylor, a retired nursery manager who cared for generations of children in Burnley. But the property otherwise looks abandoned; windows are coated in dust, grass has grown wild and the front door is boarded up.
For neighbours, it is a reminder of the moment in February last year when police broke in to find the body of the 72-year-old. She had died of a heart attack. It was some time later that, neighbours say, officials representing the royals turned up on their street.
The bungalow, and all of Taylor’s other assets, were being transferred to an estate owned by King Charles III. Born an only child to parents who had no siblings, Taylor had no known relatives and no one was able to locate her will.
Under the antiquated system of bona vacantia, everything she possessed when she was alive was, essentially, ownerless. If she had died 20 miles away, outside of what was once called the Lancashire county palatine, her assets would have been claimed by the Treasury, as it is for most Britons who die with no will or next of kin.
Exceptions apply to people who die in territories linked to medieval fiefdoms associated with two royal estates, the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster.
They are vast, professionally managed land and property portfolios that exist to raise “private” income for the heir to the throne and the monarch – Prince William and his father, King Charles.
Both duchies have long claimed that bona vacantia proceeds they collect from the estates of people such as Taylor are donated to charities. However, the Guardian has revealed that the Duchy of Lancaster has been secretly using the funds to renovate the properties owned by the king and rented out by his duchy for profit.
“It’s shocking and it shouldn’t be happening,” said Charlie Briggs, who had known Taylor since she was a child, when told the duchy was spending bona vacantia in this way. “It would be OK if the money was going to people who deserve it but not if it is going to an organisation that has plenty,” he said.
Another friend of Taylor, who asked not to be named, said she was “completely gobsmacked” that her friend’s assets would be used in this manner. “It’s not ethical, it’s not right,” she said.
More than 80 miles away, in Yorkshire, is an example of the kinds of buildings the duchy has been refurbishing using bona vacantia money – standing in contrast to Taylor’s boarded-up home in Burnley.
Outside the elegant Town Farmhouse on the Cloughton estate, the duchy’s crest is emblazoned on the signpost. The property is let out for £1,450 a month thanks to a restoration project that, the duchy boasted in a press release, enabled the mid-19th-century building to be “sensitively refurbished and modernised”.
The upgrade was partly funded with bona vacantia money, on the basis that the building, which is not listed, is part of the village of Cloughton, which is in a conservation area and can therefore be categorised as a “heritage asset”.
The practice of upgrading duchy properties in this way is understood to have been going on for several years. In 2020, officials at the king’s estate introduced a policy to formalise the process, significantly expanding the number of its properties it said could receive bona vacantia funds by deeming them “heritage assets”, to include properties located in conservation areas, areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs) and those merely deemed to be of “local historical importance”.
‘I think it’s a disgrace’
The Town Farmhouse is one of 20 duchy-owned properties in one street in Cloughton, all of them marked with navy blue doors. The Land Registry states all are owned by “the king’s most excellent majesty in right of his Duchy of Lancaster”. Together, this single street of properties could bring in rental income of about £190,000 a year to the king’s estate.
A document leaked to the Guardian suggests most of the houses on the street were identified as eligible for upgrades using bona vacantia funds. The renovations include the installation of double glazing and boilers, damp surveys, and guttering and roof repairs.
“I think it’s a disgrace, to be honest,” said Stanley Kostrzewski, a friend of David Fry, an IT worker from Liverpool whose assets were transferred to the king’s estate after he died aged 50. “I was never aware of his personal circumstances as regards family and next of kin. It sticks in the throat a bit to see his funds being used in this way.”
When Fry died, the police and coroner’s office put out calls for next of kin, but no one was found. The duchy claimed his estate officially in February 2022. By December that year, his house was up for auction. It sold for £75,000.
Many of the king’s properties are being renovated to high standards, drawing on funds inherited from people who, when they were alive, occupied more humble lodgings.
Peggy Ah Hiang Lim, who died aged 73 in March 2022, lived in a small rented flat above a care agency in Preston. When the Guardian visited the property it was still empty, the windows dirty and a torn bag of clothes in the doorway. The king’s estate took £40,000 of her assets.
Christopher Spence was 64 when he died of a suspected cardiac arrest while travelling on a bus. He had been staying at a hotel in Blackburn often used by the local council to house people experiencing homelessness. The king’s estate collected £6,625 he left behind.
Others, such as David Wells Greenhalgh, died with more substantial assets. He was 53 when he died in hospital having had renal issues for most of his life. The Conservative leader of Bolton council and a former actor on the West End, he was a well-known figure locally.
“He was an extremely warm, funny and friendly guy,” says Martyn Cox, a fellow councillor and friend who had known him for about 17 years. He was also a philanthropist, raising funds for local projects and the specialist renal care at Wythenshawe hospital. That might have been an obvious destination for his assets. Instead, with no heirs and no will, Greenhalgh’s £230,000 in assets were collected by the king’s estate.
The duchy has been known to collect as much as £1.2m from the estates of people who did not write wills. Those, however, are the exceptions. The average size of the bona vacantia “inheritance” collected by the duchy, according to analysis of its accounts, is £12,000.
The heir hunters
The duchy collects these funds with the help of an elite London law firm that has been serving members of the royal family for decades: Farrer & Co.
The lawyers are partly responsible for tracking down relatives of people who die in places linked to the medieval Lancashire county palatine – an area consisting of Lancashire and parts of Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Cumbria.
However, when John Talbot first learned of the death of his estranged father, Julian Talbot, it was not from Farrer & Co. Instead, a letter was sent to him nine months after Julian Talbot’s death by an heir hunter who had managed to track him down as a person who had a legal right to his late father’s assets.
“You don’t expect it. You come home from work and there’s a letter telling you your dad’s dead,” said Talbot.
Typically when someone dies without any known next of kin, their local council is, in the first instance, responsible for searching for relatives. If none can be found, the case is passed to the government legal department’s bona vacantia division.
Details of those who have died are published by the legal department in a spreadsheet updated regularly. The list includes, where possible, information such as maiden names, dates of birth, marital status and other clues that could help people identify surviving relatives.
The data is pored over by so-called heir hunter firms that track down relatives who might be the legal inheritors of an estate in return for a cut of the proceeds. The process is more complex in the case of people such as Julian Talbot, an ex-miner who died aged 65 of cancer. Because he lived in a part of the Lake District that was once part of Lancashire county palatine, his case was referred to the duchy.
Farrer & Co does not publish a comprehensive list of people who die without writing a will and with no known relatives in the same way as the government legal department. Instead, a separate list is published on the back pages of the Times. Neil Fraser, from the genealogy and probate research firm Fraser & Fraser, said the list appeared “as and when they choose”. Death notices are also published for a limited time in some local newspapers.
All of which makes it hard for a long-lost next of kin to find out their relative has died in large parts of north-west England, according to multiple heir hunters, genealogists and other experts. Farrer & Co declined to comment.
The duchy puts some bona vacantia money aside in a late claims fund in case relatives turn up in the future to claim what is rightfully theirs. But that process can take years, suggesting the duchy is failing to promptly locate people’s next of kin.
For John Talbot, contact from the heir hunter meant he could make a late claim to his inheritance. But news of his father’s death came late. By the time he was contacted, the duchy had arranged for Julian Talbot’s bungalow to be cleared out: his photographs and letters – and, with them, memories – were all destroyed. Only six guitars and a Toby jug were left.
But friends say it is not possible to erase the principles that Julian Talbot stood for. A lifelong socialist who had protested at Orgreave, he was, according to friends, a trenchant republican.
He is unlikely to have approved of the notion that, had it not been for some heir hunters, his worldly belongings would have gone to the king’s estate. Ceri Hutton, a longtime friend, said: “Julian would turn in his grave if he knew.”
