Sir Terry Wogan’s children are set to inherit more than £1million each from the sale of their childhood home, almost a year after the death of their beloved mother.
Lady Helen Wogan passed away aged 88 in September last year – eight years after the legendary broadcaster and her husband of 50 years.
The former fashion model had already left a massive £4,948,334 fortune to her three children – Alan, Katherine and Mark – and her grandchildren.
This included tax-free gifts of £850,000 to her eldest son Alan, who was named as executor of her estate and £750,000 to daughter Katherine.
Doting grandmother Lady Helen also set up a £100,000 trust fund for each of her grandchildren, to be made available to them when they turn 25.
But now all three of her children are set to benefit further from an equal share each from the sale of the Wogans’ highly six-bedroom family home in Buckinghamshire, which has been put on the market for £3,750,000.
The sprawling Edwardian mansion in Taplow, near Maidenhead, boasts five reception rooms, and six bathrooms set in over 6,684 square feet.
The property has landscaped gardens and grounds, including a formal walled garden as well as a tennis court and swimming pool. The secluded home also has views of Windsor Castle.
The family home: The six bedroom property in Taplow in Buckinghamshire is on the market for £3.75 million – some 50 years after the Wogans moved in
Sir Terry, pictured with his surviving children, said he could still remember Vanessa’s face in his later years
Sir Terry (pictured with Helen) was given a knighthood in 2006 after his extraordinarily popular broadcasting career
One of the things Wogan was most proud of was his work with Children In Need – he was long associated with Pudsey Bear
Lady Helen’s final will, written in February 2023, was signed off at the High Court last week.
After her death last year, her son Mark paid tribute to a ‘beautiful’ mother and grandmother as he announced her passing.
He wrote: ‘Our beautiful Mum left us last night after a fantastic life. From a young Irish rose to Lady Wogan, she was the epitome of style and grace.
‘A Mother, Grandmother and Wife, with love and kindness at her core. A strength and a belief that saw her through many of life’s trials.
‘A sense of humour and a turn of phrase that would have you in fits of laughter.
‘A proper lady in every sense of the word. Her and Dad are hopefully sharing a vodka martini and hoping we don’t make too much of fuss. We love you Mum, now and forever.’
Veteran television and radio broadcaster Sir Terry, who is believed to have been worth £20 million at the height of her career, passed on £1 million upon his death from cancer in 2016.
Lady Wogan, who was from Dublin, was a top Irish model in the 1960s and she met her husband while he was an up-and-coming star on Irish radio.
Between 1993 and his semi-retirement in December 2009, Sir Terry’s BBC Radio 2 breakfast show drew in an average of eight million listeners.
Following his death, the BBC renamed Radio 2’s studios Wogan House as a mark of respect.
The couple opted for Taplow after moving to the UK from Ireland to advance Terry’s career.
Lady Helen’s death last year was mourned by her family and many friends
Sir Terry and Lady Helen wed at her parish church in Ireland in April 1965 before moving to England
Sir Terry, seen here meeting the then Queen at a Buckingham Palace reception in 2005, was famously charming
Sir Terry first fell in love with the village, which has around 2,000 residents, in 1969 while visiting a friend, Kits Browning – the son of Daphne du Maurier – and his wife Olive.
Sir Terry and his wife Helen then moved to the village permanently in 1975 to raise their children when the success of his Radio 2 breakfast show had already catapulted him to national stardom.
Sir Terry described it as a ‘sanctuary’ where he could escape the public gaze.
And came to cherish his role as a community stalwart in Buckinghamshire, where he lived for 40 years.
Aware that the locals respected his family’s privacy in his riverside mansion, the Limerick-born DJ became a key feature of village life.
He was featured twice in a mural inside the village hall that depicts the daily lives of its inhabitants, he was vice president of the cricket club – where he enjoyed a vodka and tonic – and turned up for Christmas carols on the village green.
But while he tried his best to keep his celebrity status separate from his home life, locals were often left amused when a Rolls-Royce or helicopter arrived at his home to pick him up.
While fiercely proud of Irish roots, the grocer’s son made no secret of his love affair with the adoptive nation he came to appreciate while listening to English radio broadcasts in his bedroom.
Indeed, in 2005 Sir Terry decided to take joint British and Irish citizenship allowing him to receive a normal knighthood rather than an honorary one.
Despite spending the vast majority of his life in England, Taplow was the only place that he knew as home in the UK.
The family was so keen to engage with local life that Lady Wogan sat on a village committee for ten years.
Her husband, raised a Catholic, occasionally accompanied her to mass at a local church – despite being an outspoken atheist following the death of his first-born daughter Vanessa at three weeks old in 1966.
Sir Terry loved his Buckinghamshire home and lived there most of his adult life
Wogan’s long-running Radio 2 show was one of the most popular or all time and regularly reached an audience of millions
Priest Father Andy Richardson said he would quietly slip into to services at Our Lady of Peace church in the nearby village of Burnham after they had started.
Keen to avoid attracting attention as his wife prayed, he would then leave just before the services ended.
Nigel Smales, author of a history book on Taplow for which Sir Terry wrote the foreword, said that villagers warmed to the broadcaster because he ‘never flaunted his fame’.
Despite Terry and Helen’s happy marriage and family life, there was one tragedy that never left them.
The couple had a fourth child, their first, who they named Vanessa, to a heart condition just a few weeks after she was born in 1966.
Speaking to the Daily Mail in 2009, Terry recalled of that loss: ‘You’d think the memories would have lessened, 40 years on, but they haven’t.
‘What I find odd is that I can’t remember very much about my other children’s childhoods. Whole swathes have just gone.
‘But with the baby we lost, I remember it all so vividly. I can still see her face, which is the most terrible bit.’
He said that, at the time it happened, he was ‘resentful of fate, of life and the unfairness of it’ and punched a wall in frustration.
But worse for the star was the impact it had on his ‘broken-hearted’ wife, who had to come home from hospital without her newborn daughter.
On Lady Helen’s death, Mark Wogan – who also works in broadcasting with a job at Virgin Radio – paid tribute to a ‘beautiful’ mother and grandmother.
He wrote: ‘Our beautiful Mum left us last night after a fantastic life. From a young Irish rose to Lady Wogan , she was the epitome of style and grace.
‘A Mother, Grandmother and Wife, with love and kindness at her core. A strength and a belief that saw her through many of life’s trials.
A sense of humour and a turn of phrase that would have you in fits of laughter.
‘A proper lady in every sense of the word. Her and Dad are hopefully sharing a vodka martini and hoping we don’t make too much of fuss. We love you Mum, now and forever.’
Celebrities shared their condolences as they led the tributes to Lady Helen in the comments
