Margo Cox, a popular postwoman who was one of the first residents to set up home in Berinsfield when an airbase there closed after the Second World War, has died aged 79.

Czech-born Mrs Cox, known to many from her post rounds in Dorchester, Berinsfield and Drayton St Leonard, married former British soldier Mr Philip Cox and first moved to Berinsfield in 1947.

The couple and their children squatted in the disused Officers' Mess, with other early Berinsfield families, before moving to one of the village's first council houses, in Colwell Road, in 1957.

Accommodation was in short supply when servicemen returned to Britain after the war and many people lived in the airbase's Nissen huts until new houses were provided.

Mrs Cox made local headlines in 1949 when she tried to save a five-year-old boy who had fallen into a large water tank while playing on the disused airbase. An Inquest, reported in The Oxford Times on January 7, 1949, heard how Mrs Cox went in fully clothed and surface dived to pull him up.

The report stated: "She swam back to the side but could not get out because the sides of the tank were sloping, and had to swim holding the boy's head above water until she was pulled out with the assistance of a man and two women."

Her desperate attempts to resuscitate the boy using artificial respiration failed, but she received a bravery award from the Carnegie Hero Fund Trust for her heroic efforts.

Mrs Cox had been suffering with cancer. She leaves three daughters, a son, 13 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.

The funeral will be held at SS Mary and Berin Church, Berinsfield today (July 5) at 3.30pm.