Edith Bloomfield

A midwife who practised in Woodstock for more than 40 years has died.

Cards and letters poured in to the family of Edith Bloomfield, 91, following her death at St Luke's Hospital, Headington, on January 8.

Born in Kidlington in 1910, she went to school in the village before leaving for London to train as a midwife.

She returned to the area in 1939 to live in Wootton, and later Woodstock.

For a short time, she worked in Steeple Claydon, Buckinghamshire, before joining Woodstock Surgery, where she stayed for 46 years.

Dr Robert Edwards, a friend and colleague at the Woodstock Surgery, said: "Wootton was quite a primitive society then; the midwife had to get around on her bicycle. Mrs Bloomfield used to pay a local schoolgirl sixpence a week to draw her water from the well."

Mrs Bloomfield, known as Nurse Bloomfield, continued to work at the surgery as a district nurse until 1975, when she was 65. She stayed for a further ten years as practice nurse until retiring in 1985.

Dr Edwards added: "She was a wonderful lady, a nurse of the old-school, her patients always came first."

A great traveller, Mrs Bloomfield, along with four friends from the surgery, regularly visited many countries around the world, including Cambodia, Russia and Mexico.

She was also a keen member of the Women's Institute and enjoyed amateur dramatics.

Mrs Bloomfield's only child, daughter Jayne Franklin, has fond memories of her mother "flying off in her Morris Minor to deliver a baby".

For the last 20 years of her life, Mrs Bloomfield had been suffering with severe arthritis and was often in pain.

In 1988 she moved to a granny flat at her daughter's home in Charlton-on-Otmoor.

Mrs Franklin, of High Street, said: "She made lots of new friends and always had people visiting her.

"I have had wonderful cards and letters from everyone in Woodstock. She will always be with us; she was my best friend."