A MOTHER and daughter whose bodies were found in their dilapidated house have been described as recluses by neighbours.

The women, who are thought to have been dead for months, were last night named as Pauline Jessett and daughter Caroline.

One neighbour near their Littlemore home yesterday said he had not seen the mother for 30 years and her daughter for about six months.

Another said he had noticed a large number of flies in his house over the summer, but thought nothing of it.

Police discovered the body of Caroline Jessett, who was in her 50s, in a first-floor bedroom at the Cowley Road home on Thursday last week after Environmental Health officers raised concerns about the state of the property.

Officers had to put building supports in before searching the house again yesterday. It was then they found the body of her mother, who was in her 70s, downstairs.

The deaths are being treated as unexplained but not suspicious.

Next-door neighbour Raymond Bailey, 83, told the Oxford Mail the mother and daughter were so reclusive he did not suspect anything was wrong – despite not seeing the daughter for six months.

He said: “There were no dustbins left out, no papers, no milk bottles.

“We never used to see them. They wouldn’t have opened the door to anybody.”

The pensioner said Mrs Jessett had been left badly disabled after a horse-riding accident as a young woman. And he said he last saw her shortly after her husband Tom’s funeral in the early 1980s, adding: “I had forgotten her name.”

Great-grandfather Mr Bailey said the family had lived in the house before he moved to the street in the early 1960s. He said the daughter was a former Speedwell School pupil and did not go to work.

He said the discovery was “worrying”, adding: “It is people we have known for all this time. The one thing that is good is that it was not foul play.”

But he said he was surprised it had taken police a week to find the second body, adding: “It seems like there have been hundreds of them here in the last week.”

The other next-door neighbour, 30-year-old Lukasz Pyszczek, said he had not seen anyone at the house in more than three years. And he said he had noticed flies appearing in his home in July.

He said: “Our landlord told us the house had not changed for 15 years.”

Investigating officer Det Insp John Turner, of Oxford CID, said neither death was being treated as suspicious.

He said: “If someone has been dead for a long period of time and no one had known, I find the circumstances very sad.”

Police were last night urging anyone who knew the family to get in touch via the 101 number.