FORMER headteacher Margaret Amy Fryer, known to her pupils as Miss Cutler, has died at the age on 99.

Born in Chesterfield during the First World War in 1916 and she moved around Yorkshire and Derbyshire due to her father's job. At the age of 17 she left home to attend Hull College after being told by a doctor that she needed to have all her teeth removed.

Following her college education, Mrs Fryer took up her first job as a teaching assistant in Yorkshire in 1936 and held various teaching posts in Yorkshire and Leamington Spa during the Second World War.

She then moved with her mother to Surrey, where she taught in some infant schools and travelled to live in Broadstone with her mother in 1951.

She became deputy headmistress at Stanley Green School in Poole, followed by headmistress of Lagland Street School in 1955.

Finally Mrs Fryer became headmistress of Heatherlands Infant School in 1958, where she stayed until her retirement in 1977. At her retirement party she was presented with a host of gifts including a sailing dingy which she had won in a village raffle, but never learnt to sail it.

She used to invite her nephews and nieces, Hugh, Clive, Adrienne and Malcolm to stay with her in her bungalow during the school holidays.

She loved to travel and passed her driving test in the 1950s in a old Morris Minor Series E, which sparked a life-long interest in cars.

Mrs Fryer received a phone call out of the blue one day in 1984 from a childhood sweetheart called Edwin, who she had last seen 43 years prior to that day. They married two years later in Christchurch Priory and lived happily together until Edwin sadly died from ill-health in August 1994.

She then went on to join a number of clubs and societies and her nephew, Hugh, said that as his aunt got older, she still enjoyed the occasional glass of sherry with her Sunday lunch. She was also by a lady called Fran, who would visit Mrs Fryer up to four times a day, seven days a week.

Describing his aunt, Hugh said: "She was always kind, generous, helpful, popular, and cheerful and had a wicked sense of humour."

Mrs Fryer died on July 16, 2015, and her funeral was held on August 17 at St John the Baptist Church in Broadstone.