Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales left more than three million pounds in her will following her death at the age of 93.
The actress, who had dementia, died peacefully at her home in London in October 2025. Probate records show she left a gross estate of £3,376,585, with a net value of £3,166,554.
Beneficiaries and Charity Gifts
Her beneficiaries are her sons Samuel and Joseph and her stepdaughter Juliet. Her sons will receive 40% each of her estate, while her stepdaughter is to receive 20%.
Scales also left money to her goddaughters, as well as charities The Royal Horticultural Society, The Snipe Charitable Trust, The Campaign To Protect Rural England and The Combined Theatrical Charities Appeals Council for The King George V Fund For Actors.
Records show probate was granted on August 11 2026. The Snipe Charitable Trust, which provides grants to charitable organisations and furthering education and training of young persons in the arts, is to receive £10,000. The RHS and the Campaign to Protect Rural England will receive £1,000, while the Combined Theatrical Charities Appeals Council will receive £5,000.
Career and Legacy
Scales was best known for her role as Sybil Fawlty, the long-suffering wife of hotelier Basil Fawlty, in the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. The show, made up of only 12 episodes, ran from 1975 to 1979 and is considered one of the best comedies of all time.
Announcing her death last year, her sons said she had been watching Fawlty Towers the day before she died. Scales was married to actor Timothy West for 61 years. He died in November 2024.
Together the couple filmed 10 series of the Channel 4 programme Great Canal Journeys, which saw them travel across the UK and other parts of the world exploring different waterways, and the couple also talked openly about Scales' vascular dementia diagnosis. Their last journey for the programme was broadcast in June 2019.
Among her many roles, Scales also played Queen Elizabeth II in Alan Bennett's A Question Of Attribution, a role which earned her a Bafta nomination, and in 1973 Scales teamed up with Ronnie Barker in the series Seven Of One, also for the BBC.
