A COOKHAM woman who is depicted in a Stanley Spencer painting has died a month short of her 99th birthday.

Kate Swan lived in Cookham for most of her life and was well known to many in the village through her involvement with different community groups and projects.

She had suffered from various health problems in hospital over the last month and died of pneumonia on May 21.

Ms Swan shared a birthday with Stanley Spencer - who sent a note to her mother congratulating her on giving birth to a girl on the day he turned 20.

She was given piano lessons by Stanley's father and appears as a young girl in the 1922 painting 'Unveiling Cookham War Memorial'.

The mother-of-three was later involved in setting up the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham in 1962.

Spencer was an eccentric and celebrated English artist who lived in Cookham and used the village as the setting for many of his paintings.

Ms Swan is also fondly remembered as an 'early environmentalist', who used to go to the village recycling skip on Saturday mornings and tell people how to stack the newspapers properly.

Her daughter Hilary Garland, 63, said: “She was very concerned about the sort of world she was leaving for her grandchildren and would go and sit on top of this enormous skip. I remember she somehow managed to recycle her purse one day.”

She was born Emily Kate Francis on June 30, 1911, and lived above the bakery [now Seconds Out] on Cookham High Street, which was run by her father Frank Francis.

She went to Holy Trinity School on School Lane and after leaving at the age of 15 she worked at Cookham Post Office.

She later married Bill Swan and when World War II broke out and her husband joined the army the couple lived in the New Forest, Yorkshire and Hertfordshire.

They had three children but divorced after the war. Ms Swan moved back to Cookham in the 1950s and lived on Station Road with her children.

She worked as a dinner lady in Cookham Rise and was later employed by a bakers in Maidenhead and a garage in Slough.

Ms Swan had joined the Women's Institute in her 20s and was a permanent fixture at meetings in Cookham Rise and then Cookham Dean throughout most of the last century. She was still attending meetings in February this year.

Mrs Garland said: “The WI enriched her life immensely – she had such a wide range of interests and talents.

“My mother had this ability to make friends and keep them. She travelled a lot and met some Dutch ladies through the WI. Now a daughter of one of the ladies is coming over for the funeral.”

Ms Swan was also a member of the Cookham Society and the village flower club.

After a period living in Maidenhead, Ms Swan moved to a cottage on New Road, Cookham, in the early 1980's and lived there until her sight deteriorated towards the turn of the century.

In 2000 she moved to sheltered housing in Bourne End, but still attended WI meetings in Cookham Dean.

Mrs Garland added: “Her memory was wonderful and she retained her clarity of thought right up until the end. She was a wonderful mother and the family was the absolute centre of her being.”

Ms Swan leaves her eldest daughter Terry, 66, and twins Hilary and Michael, both 63. She also leaves eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Her next-door neighbour at New Road, Liz Kwantes, 53, said: “Everybody knew Kate...I remember her sitting up on the recycling bin every week and she had the most incredible garden as well. Right up until the end she was so interested in life.”

Notes sent to Ms Swan's family describe her as a “very special lady” and all are welcome to her funeral at Milton Chapel at the Chilterns Crematorium in Amersham on Friday, June 4.

The service is at 2.30pm and will be followed by everyone meeting at the Cookham Dean WI Hall. Family flowers only, but donations to the Royal National Institute of Blind People.