ICONIC Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales left a huge £3.2million in her estate, The Sun can reveal.
The acting icon sadly died last October aged 93 following a decade-long battle with dementia.
Documents obtained by The Sun show she passed on 40 per cent of her fortune to children Samuel West and Joseph West, who she had with late actor husband Timothy West, and 20 per cent to stepdaughter Juliet.
She also made a string of donations to charities close to her heart.
Court records show the star left an estate worth £3,376,585.
It was reduced to £3,166,554 after taxes, debts and costs were deducted.
Her will was signed in 2020 and a grant was issued by the High Court earlier this week.
In the six-page document, Scales asked her trustees to delay selling her South London home by up to a year to let grandson Clement, who lived at the property, move out.
She also revealed she and husband Timothy had gifted son Sam £300,000 to help renovate his home.
Charities to benefit from her will included the Snipe Charitable Trust, which was given £10,000, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which got £1,000, and the Royal Horticultural Society, which also got £1,000.
Prunella had continued to travel around the world into her 90s after a glittering 70-year career in TV, film and theatre.
The actress was best known for playing Sybil Fawlty, wife of John Cleese’s hot-headed hotelier Basil in classic Seventies sitcom Fawlty Towers.
The show ran for two seasons in 1975 and 1979 and is considered one of the best British comedies ever made.
Episodes often featured Sybil trying to calm Basil down or putting him in his place.
Cleese, 84, led tributes to his screen wife, branding her “a really wonderful comic actress”.
He added: “Scene after scene, she was absolutely perfect.”
Prunella also appeared in Coronation Street between in 1961 as bus guard Eileen Hughes.
She played Queen Victoria more than 400 times in a one-woman play, An Evening with Queen Victoria, written for her by Katrina Hendrey in 1979.
She would reprise the role of Victoria in the 2003 BBC docu-drama Victoria: An Intimate History.
In August 2024, aged 92, she reprised the role again for a voice over at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
The production, Queen, saw Prunella play an 81-year-old Victoria, reading out letters in the final year of her life.
Asked in 2024 if she liked playing royals, Prunella told The Times: “I don’t.
“When you say ‘like playing queens’ there aren’t any queens that I want to play.
“But the queens I have played have all been interesting people with interesting jobs and interesting lives.”
Prunella also appeared on Great Canal Journeys, a Channel 4 series celebrating her and Timothy’s love of narrow boating.
She continued to front the show despite a 2014 dementia diagnosis.
Timothy, her husband of 61 years, said of the condition: “The sad thing is that you just watch the gradual disappearance of the person that you knew and loved and were very close to.”
Prunella was born in Surrey in 1932, the daughter of actress Catherine Scales and cotton salesman John Richardson Illingworth.
She started her career as an assistant stage manager at the Bristol Old Vic in 1951 before moving into acting.
The star was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours List, and awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 1999.
Timothy, who died in November 2024, left the bulk of his £110,000 estate to charity, including theatre schools and Guide Dogs for the Blind.
BBC Comedy director Jon Petrie said: “She was a national treasure whose brilliance as Sybil Fawlty lit up screens and still makes us laugh today.”