FRIENDS of the ‘Botley Bag Lady’ have offered to help pay for her funeral as more details about the life of the elusive figure were revealed.

The death of the well-known woman who walked the length of the Botley Road carrying plastic bags shocked many when it was reported earlier this month.

Hundreds of people have contacted the Oxford Mail to leave tributes to the icon, whose real name was Eleanor Bolton, and ask for funeral details.

But Oxford’s Coroner’s Court has not confirmed when, or if, it will release the body ahead of the full inquest into the death being conducted in November.

YOUR MEMORIES: Readers who knew her share their experiences 

Oxford City Council, who organise burials or cremations for people who die with no next-of-kin, is on stand-by pending the result of the coroner’s investigation.

Friends who often stopped to chat with Ms Bolton, 73, or who knew her when she was younger, have offered to help while sharing memories of the woman.

Roger Stein said he worked with her parents, George and Louie Bolton, who lived in Bloxham and worked at the boarding school in the north Oxfordshire village.

Mr Bolton, who died in 1991, was a mathematics teacher and housemaster until his retirement in1967 while Mrs Bolton was the village’s first ‘land girl’ during the Second World War.

Oxford Mail:

A well-respected couple, they met the Queen Mother during the school’s centenary in 1960 and a campaign was started to pay for their headstone in Bloxham Cemetery - installed in 2003.

Eleanor’s remains may be interred with those of her parents in this cemetery, returning her to the village where she was born in 1945.

Mr Stein, who still lives in Bloxham, said: “I knew her a little bit when she was quite young. We used to see her around the village.

“She just took off on her own, I don’t quite know when she decided to do it or why. I don’t think they were ever fully estranged but we didn’t see her again in the village.

“It may not be true but I heard a story that she was sat in the chapel at the age of three and looked up to see the hymn numbers and said ‘daddy all those can be divided by three’.

“It shows how intelligent she was.”

Rebbeca Morse struck up a friendship with Ms Bolton in 2010 when she refused to take her £5 note at Gloucester Green bus station.

She said: “She was incredibly intelligent and used to work as an academic with a maths degree.

“She would sit in a bus shelter in Botley Road and read the daily newspapers and eat from litter bins because she hated to see how much was wasted.

“She had had a tough life so she decided to leave mainstream society behind.”