ABOUT a year ago, I wrote a piece paying belated homage to a wealthy businessman and worthy local benefactor who lived for some years at Hallow Park - a large house and estate on the Worcester side of Hallow village.

He was Joseph Banks, who gave significant sums to deserving causes in and around Worcester more than half a century ago, and also donated substantial sums to hospitals and charities nationwide.

As a result of Memory Lane appearing on the internet, descendants of Joseph Banks have caught up with the article and contacted me, most notably Mrs Beryl Robson of Charlton All Saints, Salisbury, Wiltshire.

"Thank you so very much for the kind way your article was written, which we greatly appreciate," said Mrs Robson, a grand daughter of Joseph Banks and his wife Elizabeth.

"They were the most wonderful grandparents in every way and we spent many very happy holidays with them at Hallow Park, also attending Hallow church as one large family where we usually sat at the back on the right hand side. I still have the small prayer book my grandmother gave me."

Mrs Robson also has fond memories of many rides in her grandfather's Rolls Royce including shopping trips to Worcester with her grandmother. At the wheel would be "the delightful chauffeur whose name was Downing.

"My grandmother died before my grandfather which left him distraught, and he just seemed to lose the will to live. He died shortly afterwards, and I remember to this day the beautiful words he had written on her gravestone: 'Love and understanding she gave abundantly.' "

* Joseph Banks began as an office boy with a clothing manufacturing company at Chester and worked his way up to become managing director and then proprietor. He used to commute every day from Hallow Park to Chester, in his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce. His business expanded from one main shop in Chester to a Northern and Midlands chain of 138 retail shops and three factories with more than 1,000 employees.

He left substantial bequests to Worcester Royal Infirmary and the British Empire Cancer Campaign and also significant sums to the Royal Albert Orphanage, Barnados, Worcester YMCA, the Salvation Army, the Royal British Legion, other servicemen's welfare organisations, hospitals in London, Chester ,and other parts of the country, and to Hallow Parish Council.

He donated the first £5,000 towards a new nurses' home at Worcester Royal Infirmary, gave land at Hallow for the creation of a village playing field and paid £650 towards the building of Hallow Parish Hall.

During the Second World War he gave £5,000 for the production of a new Spitfire which was christened Hallow. He was also made a Freeman of London, primarily because of his great gifts to the Cancer Hospital there.

He died in December 1941, aged 75, and is buried in Hallow churchyard.

Mrs Robson has sent me a series of photographs taken at Hallow Park in the late 1930s.

n It was Dave Williams of Stoke Gifford, near Bristol, who last year, first alerted me to Joseph Banks and the Hallow Spitfire. I have now put him in touch with Mrs Robson, and in a recent e-mail, Dave stresses: "It seems none of Joseph Banks' family were aware of his great benevolence in his lifetime. Mrs Robson says it would have been typical of him just to get on and do it.

"I am surprised he was never honoured in any way but Mrs Robson says her grandfather shunned the limelight and would never have sought publicity for his actions."