A Dorchester teacher has lost her battle with cancer aged 68.

Lynn Williams moved to Dorset in 1965 after having taught in London and Daventry.

She started working locally as a supply teacher and taught at several schools before taking a career break to raise a family.

Mrs Williams later returned to teaching and taught at Sunninghill Preparatory School in Dorchester for five years during the 1970s before joining the art department at the then Hardye’s Grammar School.

She later became the head of year nine at Hardye’s, organising the school’s intake from its feeder schools.

In 1997, Mrs Williams retired to live in France with her husband Gordon and began working as a volunteer teaching English to French mature students.

Mr Williams said: “After an idyllic lifestyle in the Dordogne, in 2005 Lynn was diagnosed with cancer and after two major operations in France, plus three lots of chemotherapy we decided to return to live in Bournemouth to be near family.”

After more treatment at Poole Hospital, Mrs Williams’s cancer went into remission but it returned and she passed away last month in the Macmillan Unit of Christchurch Hospital.

Her husband said everyone who met her said she was a ‘special’ person.

Mrs Williams leaves behind her husband, daughters Sally and Jessica, who are teachers, and five grandchildren.