Baynes fights mother’s lesbian lover’s will

The former wife of film director Ken Russell, the actress and erotic writer Hetty Baynes (pictured), is going head-to-head with the Landmark Trust, the building preservation society, in an attempt to get a share of the £2.3 million estate left by her mother's lesbian lover. When Mary Spencer Watson, a distinguished sculptor with whom Bayne's mother Margot Baynes lived for half a century, died two years ago she left the bulk of her £2.3m fortune to the Trust. However, Baynes, who has appeared in episodes of Rumpole of the Bailey and Footballers' Wives, claims that it was not Spencer Watson's intention to leave her out of the will (she did, in fact, receive a small bequest of £2,550).

Baynes, who told the High Court yesterday that she was living in "extremely straitened circumstances", is asking for £570,000 to buy a three-bedroomed home and wants help to discharge of £160,000 debts and £7,500 for a car. This, she says, will provide her with "a financial cushion to cover her until she has her life on an even keel".

She bases her claim on the fact that Spencer Watson and her mother were in effect a married couple, and that the artist treated her as a daughter, offering her financial support throughout her life. However, Spencer Watson, the defence lawyers claim, felt that she had done more than enough for Baynes over the years and so chose to leave her principal asset, Dunshay Manor, a 15-acre estate in Purbeck, Dorset, to the Landmark Trust.

To complicate matters further, Baynes's mother, now aged 90 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, has launched her own £1.6m claim on the estate through her granddaughter, Melissa. The case continues.