'It's a disgrace' People whose assets went to the monarch

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, Lancashire.

- Maeve McClenaghan

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, neighbours say, that officials representing the royals turned up on their street.

The home, and all Taylor's other assets, were being transferred to an estate owned by the king. An only child to parents without siblings, she had no known relatives and no one could find her will. Under the bona vacantia system, everything she had possessed while alive was now, essentially, ownerless. If she had died 20 miles away, outside what was once the Lancashire county palatine, her assets would have gone to the Treasury, as happens for most Britons who die with no will or next of kin.