Valerie de Tracey-Kelly, who was the driving force behind a former Oxfordshire preparatory school, has died a few months after her husband, Edward, died in July.

Mrs de Tracey-Kelly lived in retirement at Chesterton, near Bicester, and died on December 31, aged 85, after a short illness. Their daughter, Rosamund de Tracey-Kelly, a sculptor, said: "Many people in Chesterton have said that with her death an era has come to an end. She had lived and was well-known in the village since 1953. "She was regarded as the driving force behind my father's school, Audley House, first in Stratton Audley and later at Chesterton Lodge."

A trained nurse, Mrs de Tracey-Kelly, brought her professional skills to helping to handle up to 120 boys.

Born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, Mrs de Tracey-Kelly was educated locally and at Cheltenham Ladies' College.

Soon after she completed her education, the 1939-45 war broke out and she trained as a nurse in the VAD women's voluntary aid organisation.

Mrs de Tracey-Kelly met her husband at the beginning of the war when he was in the Territorial Army. They married in 1940. But the war kept them separated until he was demobbed in 1946.

After attending Oxford University, he became a pre-schoolteacher in Surrey, then decided to establish his own school at Stratton Audley, near Bicester. She carried on running the domestic side of the school until it closed in 1994.

The funeral is at St Mary's Church, Chesterton, tomorrow at 2pm.