ANTHONY Boynton Wood, one of North Yorkshire's most famous landowners and a direct descendant of Edward III, has died. He was 80.

Mr Boynton Wood, who died suddenly at his home, at Hollin Hall, Ripon, was also the Lord of the Manor of Copmanthorpe, near York.

His death ends the Boynton Wood association with Copmanthorpe that spanned more than four centuries. He was an expert in genealogy and heraldry and his own coat of arms, granted in 1585, displayed three naked club-wielding men posing beside an oak tree.

This caused something of a rumpus in Copmanthorpe where this distinctive coat of arms hung on a sign outside the Royal Oak public house. The sign was removed in 1989 but was reinstated in the following year following protests.

In 1984, Mr Boynton Wood, who was once described as "an engagingly eccentric squire" by a glossy magazine, felled 12 oak trees from his Hollin Hall estate for the York Minster Restoration Appeal after the Minster fire. The wood was installed in the South Transept.

He said at the time: "It is marvellous and tremendously exciting to see the oak on the final stage of its journey and to think that the trees will still be here long after Hollin Hall has gone".

Anthony Boynton Wood never married and his closest relative, a cousin, lives in Dorset. A Mass will be held in his memory at Ampleforth Abbey on Tuesday, February 17, at noon.

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