Was £29,000 a lot of money?

[electricshower]

My grandfather was mentioned in a newspaper article in 1935 as the executor and beneficiary of a £29,000 will. How much money was this?

I always thought my grandfather was quite poor as he lived in a 3 bedroom suburban house and used to sail to his travels in India rather than fly etc

Using this https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator it says it’s over £1.7million!

First Google hit https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1937?amount=29000 I'm sure there are lots more

The vast majority of overseas travel would have been by boat rather than plane until after WW2. Heathrow didn't open until 1946, prior to WW2 there was only one commercial airport in the UK and that was Croydon.
So the travelling by boat was normal for overseas. The very fact he went overseas for leisure at all indicates he was reasonably well off, it was not common for 'ordinary' people to go abroad, only started to become more the norm in the 60s or even arguably the 70s.

Travel overseas was pretty rare before the late 60's and even through the 70's was the preserve of either the young without responsibilities (living at home cheaply) or the middle classes. The fact he travelled means he had means! Also a 3 bed semi in the suburbs was very desirable at that point, overcrowding was common, sharing a property with another family or two not uncommon and city centres were undesirable places to live right up through the 80's. Owning bigger than a 3 bed semi would have been very unusual as in reality most rented until the 80's

Also you could buy a 3 bedroomed LONDON suburban house for about £300 back then so by inheriting £29,000 he was basically inheriting enough wealth to buy about 100 London houses. Imagine how rich that would make him now!
There's never a direct correlation because of societal changes, but he certainly was not badly off.

Also you could buy a 3 bedroomed LONDON suburban house for about £300 back then

My grandparents paid £340 for theirs in 1932 (£100 of which came from my grandmother winning a newapaper competition.).

And the average working class wage in the 1930s was about 1 pound 11 shillings a week for a man - and around half that for a woman.

This is a huge sum of money, yes.

Well it would have bought a 3 bed semi in 1980..

To give you some idea, I bought a house for £24,500 in 1985.