TRIBUTES have been paid to the former Chipping Norton mayor Gina Burrows, who died on November 24.

Dr Burrows was a prominent Labour councillor in the town, serving from 1999, and was twice chosen as mayor.

During her mayoral years, she was instrumental in the council’s 400th anniversary celebrations, for which she organised an event where the councillors dressed in 17th century costumes.

Recently she formed a volunteer street cleaning group and Friends of the Town Hall, which has so far raised £10,000 for the restoration of the hall.

She was born in 1941 in North London, the only daughter of a family of funeral directors.

In 1962, when she was 21, she moved to Paris to work at the British Embassy.

It was there that she met her husband, Ronald Burrows, and the pair quickly fell in love and married. Their son, Stephen, was born in Paris.

In 1965 the young family moved to Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and then to Bracknell, Berkshire.

Dr Burrows got a job as a secretary at Garth Hill Primary School, but she soon found herself with a desire to teach.

She started her training in 1975, and worked her way up to become deputy headteacher at St Andrew’s CoE Primary School, Chinnor.

Dr Burrows moved to Chipping Norton in 1990. After her retirement in 1994, she worked as a secretary in the anthropology department of Oxford University.

She then went back to school, first to study for an MA in Victorian women in 1993 and then a PhD in the George Orwell novel A Clergyman’s Daughter.

Dr Burrows leaves behind her partner, Rob Evans, son Stephen, 46, daughter Cathy, 43, and grandson Alex, eight.

Her husband died in 1994.

Her son said: “She was a very caring and considerate woman, with unlimited reserves of energy that she devoted to as many people in a positive way as she could.”

Dr Burrows died at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford.

She was suffering from cancer.