A pioneering woman who helped set up Great Yarmouth's first family planning clinic has died at the age of 91.

From 1959 until 1974, Doreen King helped hundreds of women in both Great Yarmouth and Gorleston to access contraception and support.

In 1957, when she moved to the area, she was shocked to find there was no family planning clinic in the town.

Two years later, she was a founder member of the Great Yarmouth Family Planning Association and she became secretary of the organisation until it was taken over by the NHS in 1974.

During that time, she was involved in the establishment of three clinics in the borough. 

Her daughter Rosemary said: "She was passionate about rights for women, that women should have the same opportunities as men, as well as having the right to choose if or when they had children."

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Mrs King was born July 1932 in Lewisham in South East London. She was brought up in the shadow of the Second World War and evacuated twice from the city.

in 1957, she moved to Norfolk, where her first job was at Gorleston Girls County Secondary School - which later became Claydon Secondary Modern School before it was torn down in 2001 - as a special educational needs teacher.

When her own children were small, she gave up teaching - but in the 1970s she started supply teaching and eventually took a permanent post at Edward Worlledge, until she retired in 1992.

Rosemary said that her mother was "absolutely passionate about education and believed if you taught a child to read and write, they could face the world with confidence".

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After retiring from teaching, Mrs King joined the Women's Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS) and distributed meals on wheels in the Newtown area for more than 19 years.

She was also a reader, later presenter, for Grapevine, the local talking newspaper, for more than 25 years, as well as national co-ordinator for Talking Trefoil from 2004 until 2021.

Rosemary said: "She had an amazing zest for life and a strong sense of duty. She loved talking to people and was genuinely interested in people and their lives."

Mrs King died on May 14.