A POPULAR school librarian who has died a few years after retiring at the age of 80 has been described as a “dynamo”.


Iris Bailey, 84, started as a temporary helper in the library of what is now King Harold Business and Enterprise Academy in Broomstick Hall Road, Waltham Abbey, in the 1970s, while her son Andrew was a pupil there.

But she made herself so useful, she was offered a job as an assistant, helping run the library and supporting pupils, which she kept for more than 30 years.

Her husband Mark Bailey, 74, said: “She absolutely loved it. She so loved dealing with the children.

“Those who were keen, she did everything to encourage. She was not best pleased about (retiring).


“Some pupils we still used to see in the town centre and some became personal friends.”

The couple moved to Eastbrook Road, Waltham Abbey after meeting while they were both on a home nursing course run by the Red Cross while working at the Prince of Wales hospital in Tottenham in 1961.


Mr Bailey was a paramedic for the Middlesex County Ambulance Service and Mrs Bailey was an assistant in the pathology laboratory at the hospital.


“She was only just over five feet, but she was a dynamo,” said Mr Bailey. “She was good at everything and a lovely person.”


As well as her family and work, Mrs Bailey also had a passion for creating miniature shops and was working on her last one until two days before she died of liver cancer last Thursday (August 2).


Her funeral is due to take place at Waltham Abbey Parish Church on Wednesday at 1pm.

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