A former Oxford district nurse who gave 30 years of service to the Girl Guides movement has died aged 86.

Rosemary Wilson had worked at the Radcliffe Infirmary and then as a district nurse in New Hinksey, before becoming an active member of the church community there and later in Kennington.

From the late 1960s, she became involved in the Girl Guides as a volunteer and eventually took on a county commissioning role.

She was born in Sri Lanka – then Ceylon – on June 30, 1928, to parents Mollie and Harry and she grew up there with her sister Isla until she was 10.

Her parents then sent the sisters to Dundee, Scotland, to live with an aunt.

She sent them to a boarding school St Leonards, in St Andrews, where she stayed until she was 17. After leaving, she trained to be a midwife at the Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion, in Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital.

She came down to the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, to work as a general nurse in the late 1940s.

There she met her future husband, Eric Wilson, a worker for British Rail who had become her patient after an accident.

They married in St Michael at the North Gate church in 1952 and had two children, Peter in 1953, followed by Helen in 1955.

The family moved to a home in Oswestry Road, New Hinksey, and although Mrs Wilson had given up nursing to raise her children, she later became a district nurse for the area in the late 1960s.

During her time in the area Mrs Wilson became an active member of St John’s church.

And she also began her involvement with the Girl Guides, eventually rising to be a county commissioner and staying with the organisation for some 30 years.

In 1973, her family moved to The Avenue, in Kennington, where she became an active member of St Swithun’s Church.

Mrs Wilson stayed there until her husband’s death in 2013, when she moved to York to be closer to her daughter.

Mrs Wilson died on June 5 due to lung disease. Her funeral is today at All Saints Church, in Huntington, York, at 1.30pm.

She is survived by her two children, as well as her grandchildren, Ollie, Frances, Nick and John.