THE son of a former Worcester College employee who died after going missing in 2014 has said a planned memorial bench will finally bring some closure.

Jackie Gulliford died at the age of 61 after she disappeared from her home during flooding in Oxford in January 2014.

Two months later her body was found in the River Evenlode and an inquest heard she was likely to have committed suicide.

Son James said the bench, which will be installed at Worcester College in time for the next academic year, was a "lovely gesture."

He said: "It is a definite sense of closure, it is something I really wanted to do.

"The college offered some sort of memorial when it all happened but at the time we were not really in the right frame of mind.

"Last October I thought about it again and thought it would be really nice."

Eynsham woman Mrs Gulliford worked at the college for 16 years as a senior accounts assistant.

Mr Gulliford said he was looking forward to being able to sit by the bench and remember his mother, along with his sister Sarah and her two children.

The 31-year-old said: "We will have something physical which we can go and look at.

"It is a project which we can finish on.

"The second year since her death has been better than the first year.

"You think about it all the time."

The bench will sit in the garden of Worcester College near a new lecture theatre which is currently under construction.

Mr Gulliford, who works for telecommunications company Verizon, said he had been told he and the rest of his family would be able to visit it any time they wanted.

He said he had also been touched by the generosity of the college.

He said: "She was there for 16 years and she worked at the university prior to that at different colleges.

"I was surprised how she was still remembered there.

"She is very loved by people there."

At the inquest into Mrs Gulliford's death it was heard that she had been discharged from the Warneford Hospital a week before she went missing and had been treated for depression there since December.

Her family said they were not told she was at high risk of self-harm or suicide and Mr Gulliford has since criticised the way the NHS informs families about the mental wellbeing of their loved ones.

He said the installation of the memorial bench allowed him to focus on something more positive.

He said: "It is good to do something positive for a change.

"Most of the time when I am talking to people it is negative, about how it all ended.

"To be able to think about what she did previously is good.

"I do not want the last thing I do about her to be negative, that is why I wanted this bench."