CONSTANCE Kenyon, who has died at the age of 93, was one of Runcorn's most remarkable teachers.

She held strong political views, joining the Communist Party of Great Britain, and when she was mugged by two young attackers at the age of 80 she spoke on behalf of her assailants, laying the blame on Margaret Thatcher's 'poisoning' of politics!

A well-known primary schoolteacher, Miss Kenyon taught at Runcorn's Victoria Road School between the 1940s and 1960s.

For many years she taught the boys' top class in preparation for the 11-plus examinations, but in her later years she moved to helping much younger pupils, both boys and girls, who experienced learning difficulties.

The funeral cortege, in its journey from Runcorn to Widnes Crematorium on Friday, stopped for several minutes outside Victoria Road School where members of staff, pupils and former pupils, paid their respects.

Miss Kenyon lived for many years in Oxford Road, Runcorn, but for the last year, with failing health, had been a resident at the Hazlehurst Residential Home in Palacefields where she died the previous weekend.

Born in Manchester, she spent her childhood in the Lake District and it was there she began her teaching career. Her popularity with her pupils long pre-dated her arrival in Runcorn.

For several years of her life, until her health made it impossible for her to travel, she had been the centre of a series of annual reunions in Ulverston of former pupils, by then in their seventies, who had been members of the first classes she ever taught.

Miss Kenyon was for many years a keen supporter of socialist causes.

Non-religious in outlook, and a keen music lover, she had asked that her funeral service should be of a 'rationalist' nature. So several dozen friends gathered at the crematorium to hear some favourite bits of music and to share the opportunity of speaking in her memory.

Journalist Bob Keogh, one of the speakers, recalled that Connie Kenyon was remarkable in many ways.

'How many 70-year-olds do we know who would take themselves, solo, across the trans-Siberian railway, all the way to Vladivostok?' he asked. 'Or how many 80-year-olds, having been mugged by a couple of young men, would then speak up for their attackers?'

Bob recalled that when he first got to know her there were two things outstanding on her agenda. The first was to visit the USA, which she managed to do shortly afterwards.

Then, as soon as she was back, she did the second thing which was to join the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Had the two things been done the other way round at that point of the Cold War she would not have been allowed the visa which enabled her to visit America.

There were no flowers by request at the funeral. Instead, contributions are invited to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) at 55 Lincolns Inn Fields, London WC2, or to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.