Tributes have been paid to a ‘wonderful’ former primary school teacher who died after a courageous battle with cancer.

Kathleen Brunt, known as Kate, worked as a teaching assistant at Peel Park in Accrington and Mount Pleasant in Clayton-le-Moors before becoming a teacher at West End Primary in Oswaldtwistle and later at St Nicholas CE Primary in Church.

The grandmother-of-two, who lived on Whalley Road in Accrington for more than two decades, was also an active member of Accrington Ladies Circle and the Accrington Inner Wheel.

Her husband of 56 years Roger Brunt said Kate battled oesophagus cancer with ‘fortitude and positivity’.

She passed away on Wednesday, November 28, aged 80.

Roger, who worked at Haworth and Nuttall Solicitors in Accrington, said: “She was a very wonderful person and she had a lot of love for anybody and everybody.

“The consultant on the ward said she was amazing and a very special patient because she always appeared to be happy and able to cope with great pain.

“We had been told the previous day that things were not good but everyone was hopeful. On the day she died she was happy and smiling with make-up on and her hair done.

“The cancer returned in April and we were told she had about one year which would have taken us into summer next year. But the cancer grew and blocked the oesophagus.

“What happened was more than the body could cope with.”

Kate later moved to Read and then Whalley after her retirement and enjoyed spending time with her children Peter, Ian and Helen and grandchildren Fiona and Alastair.

Roger, 80, said she also loved her time as a teacher and working in Hyndburn.

He said: “She started as a teaching assistant and that whetted her appetite to become a teacher.

“She loved teaching and I think it’s fair to say she was a pretty good teacher. She stuck to primary and she was quite a talent.

“My children tell me that she had a wonderful teacher’s eye.

"She used to stop them making any comments as I began to bald slightly at the top of my head.

"She could see them about to rib me and the teacher’s eye would come on.”

There will be a Requiem Mass at English Martyrs Church in Whalley at 11am on Tuesday, December 11, the service conducted by Father John Marsland before cremation at 1pm at Accrington Crematorium.

Family flowers only please. Donations to Macmillan Cancer Support, for whom Kate campaigned long before the illness returned and took her when thought to have been beaten.

The funeral director is Peter Regan, of Hyndburn Funeral Services, Accrington.