A WOMAN who was heavily involved in running various clubs, charities and schools in Gerrards Cross has died aged 83.

Dr Audrey Hogarth, of Orchehill Avenue, was well known in the village after serving as a magistrate for 29 years and setting up the ever-popular Gerrards Cross Summer School in 1984.

She died from multiple myeloma on May 5, after fighting the disease since 2005.

She had still been active, and her family have had to cancel dozens of lectures she was due to give at various locations around the country.

Dr Hogarth had begun her career as a University lecturer and returned to her “first love” in later life. She would talk on various subjects including her travel experiences and time spent as a magistrate.

In 1951 she married Cyril Hogarth, a renowned physicist and former chairman of South Bucks District Council, who died in 2007.

She leaves two children and nine grandchildren. Daughter Celia Stuart-Lee, 55, is a teacher at St Mary's School in Gerrards Cross, while son Adrian Hogarth, 49, is a lawyer in London. A second daughter, Yvonne, died in 1994.

Celia said: “We've been touched by all the letters, many of which make reference to her great intelligence...her honesty and integrity and her heart for the community in which she lived.”

“She was a one off...an adventurer, and very very gutsy. And despite doing all these amazing things she was a really devoted mother.”

Born on June 24, 1926, she was schooled in Colchester and Banbury before completing a doctorate in Dairy Bacteriology at Reading University.

Dr Hogarth first moved to Gerrards Cross in 1958.

She joined the Beaconsfield Magistrates Bench [now Wycombe & Beaconsfield] in 1967 and was chairman from 1983 to 1993.

In a lecture about being a magistrate Dr Hogarth would describe how “every sitting can provide new problems, new roguery, unusual defendants and on occasions very humorous situations”.

In the 1960s Dr Hogarth organised self-defence classes for girls at the guides hut and became integral to the management of the Gerrards Cross Community Association at the Memorial Centre.

In the 1970s she worked with the Suffolk House Drug Rehabilitation Centre and joined the League of Friends of Gerrards Cross and Chalfonts Hospital for five years from 1984.

She was later involved in the Beaconsfield & Chiltern Luncheon Club, the Gerrards Cross Neighbourhood Watch scheme and the Buckinghamshire Foundation.

She was also a governor at the former Oakdene Girls School in Beaconsfield and later Thorpe House Prep School in Gerrards Cross.

There will be a memorial service at St James Church, on Oxford Road in Gerrards Cross, on June 3 at 2pm, with tea at the Memorial Centre afterwards.