Prunella Scales leaves £3.1M in her will after the Fawlty Towers star died aged 93 from vascular dementia

Prunella Scales, the legendary actress who played Basil Fawlty’s domineering wife Sybil in the hit BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers, left more than £3.1million in her will.

Scales, who had vascular dementia, died peacefully aged 93 last October at her home near Wandsworth Common in south west London.

Probate records released today reveal she left the bulk of her estate in trust for her family.

The national treasure actress, who was appointed a CBE in 1992 for services to the theatre, was married to actor Timothy West for 61 years before his death in November 2024.

Her sharp-tongued and long-suffering character Sybil Fawlty screamed her warpath battle cry, ‘Basil’, at her chaotic screen husband played by John Cleese in the 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers, first screened between 1975 and 1979.

But Prunella was also famed for a multitude of stage and screen roles including her 1991 performance as Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett’s A Question of Attribution, about Sir Anthony Blunt, the surveyor of the late Queen’s pictures who became a Soviet spy.

Prunella Scales, the legendary actress who played Basil Fawlty’s domineering wife Sybil in the hit BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers, left more than £3.1million in her will

She played her role at the National Theatre in 1988 and later in the BBC’s TV adaptation of the play in 1991 which won a BAFTA award as best single drama. Prunella also appeared with West between 2014 and 2019 in Channel 4’s acclaimed show Great Canal

Journeys where they celebrated their love for living on narrow boats and each other.

She was forced to quit after ten series due to her ailing health as her dementia took hold.

Her husband revealed in his book that the signs of her illness were there long before as she had kept slipping her lines during a 2003 production of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman Of No Importance at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London’s West End.

Her family revealed after her death that she was watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died.

Her grant of probate reveals she left assets worth £3,376,585 in the UK reduced to a net estate of £3,166,554 after payment of liabilities.

Prunella’s will drawn up in October 2020 left £10,000 to the Snipe Charitable Trust which promotes the education and training of young people in the arts.

She also left £5,000 to the Combined Theatrical Charities Appeal of the Council for the King George V Fund for Actors, and £1,000 each to the Royal Horticultural Society and the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

There were also legacies of £2,000 each to two god-daughters, and a request that her trustees dispose of her personal possessions, known as chattels, according to any memo that she might have left.

She left the remainder of her estate in trust with shares of 40% each going to each of her sons Sam, an actor, theatre director and narrator, and Joseph, from her marriage.

The remaining 20% was left to her step-daughter Juliet from West’s previous marriage to actress Jacqueline Boyer.

An addition to her will drawn up in 2024 stated that the amounts received by her sons and stepdaughter should potentially be reduced if they had received gifts from her or her husband during their lifetime.

The codicil said that this should specifically take into account the sum of £300,000 given to Sam to pay for the renovation of his house.

Prunella’s husband West played Eric Babbage in Coronation Street in 2013, and Stan Carter in EastEnders from 2014 to 2015, and was also ruthless businessman Bradley Hardacre in the comedy Brass on ITV in 1983 and 1984, and in a third series on Channel 4 in 1990.

He also had film roles in The Day Of The Jackal (1973), A Cinderella Story (1998), and in Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) while he was a regular performer of Shakespeare, playing Lear in 2016 and 2002.

Bradford-born West died aged 90 in November 2024 after a short stay in a care home following three months in hospital following a fall on a footpath near his home.

He was appointed a CBE for his services to drama in 1984. Probate records revealed in June last year that West left a net estate worth only £109,892.

However his net estate would not have included any property or assets jointly owned with his wife, including potentially the £3million value of their home, which would have passed to her automatically on his death.

West’s will left £60,000 to charities and good causes and another £20,000 to his sister with the remainder going to Prunella.

Prunella who used the surname Scales for acting, taking it from her actor and author mother Catherine Scales, was born in Surrey in 1932.

The family of her father John Illingworth had owned a tobacco factory in Yorkshire and he was an ex-Army officer and cotton salesman.

She won a scholarship to the Old Vic school in 1949, and made a professional stage debut as an aged cook in Jean Anouilh’s Traveller Without Luggage at the Bristol Old Vic in 1951.

Her television debut came in 1952 when she played Lydia Bennet in an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

After seasons in rep, she appeared on the London stage in 1955 and had a season at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1956 before joining the Oxford Playhouse and the Dundee Rep.

She met Timothy West while doing a TV play in 1961 which was the year she played bus conductor Eileen Hughes, in five episodes of Coronation Street.

Her career was transformed when played Kate Starling, opposite Richard Briers, in the BBC’s Marriage Lines which portrayed the joys and pitfalls of married life between 1963 and 1966.

Prunella also appeared with West in the stage adaptation of JB Priestley’s When We Are Married when they played one of three couples celebrating a silver wedding anniversary from 1985 to 1986.

She also played a vengeful wife who emerged in a TV drama called Home Cooking – part of the Unnatural Causes series in 1986 – when her character had a nude sex scene with a commercial traveller and steamed her husband to death in a sauna.

Films she appeared in included The Boys from Brazil (1978), Howards End (1992), and An Awfully Big Adventure (1994), based on a Beryl Bainbridge novel about the lost days of weekly rep, co-starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant.

But she became better known again on TV in a brilliant series of adverts for Tesco, in which she played Dottie, a bespectacled mother to Jane Horrocks.

When the late Queen pinned the CBE insignia to Prunella’s lapel at Buckingham Palace in 1992, she recalled how she had once played her, saying: ‘I suppose you think you should be doing this.’