Many ex-pupils of St Mary’s Primary School will be saddened by the death of ex-head teacher Pam Roxburgh (née Roberts) who died early last month in Blandford Hospital.
As ‘Miss Roberts,’ Pam taught at Stalbridge for in the 1970s before being appointed head of a primary school in Cornwall. She returned to Stalbridge as head of St Mary’s.
She married Edwin Roxburgh, an antiques dealer and land owner, and went to run a successful chinaware shop in Sherborne’s Long Street, before moving with Edwin to the Dordogne in SW France.
On Edwin’s death she returned to Dorset to live in Fitzoak Cottage in Higher St, Okeford Fitzpaine, where she was diagnosed with cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
Pam, 81, was a striking, warm-hearted lady with a keen sense of fun, says Andy Palmer, who was a 10 year-old pupil at the school when she first taught at Stalbridge.
‘When I moved back to Dorset I used to call on her several times a week and take her out and it was always a pleasure. She was full of fun and still behaved as if she was in her twenties, when she became friends with my mother, Audrey Palmer, who also taught at St Mary’s’.