Daphne Meller, of Bishopstoke and who worked as a secretary at MI5, has died aged 102

Daphne Meller lived in Hampshire for nearly 70 years and spent decades working as a charity volunteer.

Her father was a doctor based in London where, in 1936, Daphne was employed at MI5 as secretary to a future director general of the service.

The restrictions imposed by the Official Secrets Acts always remained inviolable to her but occasionally she would let slip stories of her involvement with the Abdication crisis or the shadowing of spies.

In 1938 she married Harry Meller, a doctor, and the pair enjoyed a round-the-world honeymoon travelling by sea to the Antipodes and back via the Panama Canal.

During the war she and her sister lived in St Albans with five children under five while their husbands served abroad.

In the freezing winter of 1947 the Mellers moved to Southampton and three years later to Bishopstoke.

In 1965 Daphne was widowed and in 1975 she moved to Compton Street but not before she had arranged a gift of a part of her Bishopstoke garden to the Hampshire Voluntary Housing Association where accommodation for 19 residents was built.

Settled in Compton for the next 35 years, Daphne became active in voluntary work - the WRVS, Meals on Wheels, the Citizens Advice Bureau and especially Winchester Cathedral.

She regularly “womanned” the cathedral bookstall and the refectory till, honing her tourist vocabulary in French, German and even Dutch.

Another of her interests was industrial archaeology. She generously contributed to the restoration of the SS Shieldhall, a former Clyde sludge boat which now cruises out of Southampton.

Daphne finally 'retired' when driving became tricky and she spent her last five years in an Otterbourne care home visited by her four children, 11 grandchildren and 18 great grandchildren.

On the day of her cremation a half muffled peal was rung in Bishopstoke where one of the 10 bells in the church had been her gift in memory of her husband.