From the newswires:
Four acres of beachfront property near Katharine Hepburn’s home will become protected land for public use, according to the late actress’ will.
Hepburn, who died last month at her waterfront home in the Fenwick section of Old Saybrook, left 4.17 acres of land to the east of her driveway for “exclusively public purposes.” The document, written in 1992, asks that no memorial service or funeral be held for her. Instead, the intensely private actress asked that she be cremated and her ashes interred in the family plot in Hartford. Hepburn’s Oscars and other awards, scripts, photographs, letters and costumes will go to a charitable organization of the executors’ choice. The executors will also decide which of her letters, manuscripts and other papers should be published.
Most of the actress’ estate will go to her family. She left her Connecticut home and New York town house to her brother Robert Hepburn, sister Margaret Perry and to the families of her late brother, Richard, and late sister, Marion.
The will does not say how much Hepburn’s estate is worth. The land left for public use is located to the east of the house’s driveway. It is bordered by a crescent-shaped beach that is rocky toward the water and sandy father in. The rest of the land is filled with shrubs, cattails, beach roses and grasses.
The will stipulates the land should go to a federal state or local body or conservation organization for “the benefit of the general public,” but Hanson said Hepburn intended for the land to be protected and preserved but not used by the public. The Lynde Point Land Trust hopes to be the recipient of the property. The organization works to keep open space in Fenwick in its natural state. Hepburn also left $10,000 to a tiny church in eastern Maryland where her grandfather, Sewell Hepburn, was a minister.