A former Deal trainee nurse at Deal Hospital who worked with Claire Rayner, who died on Monday, 79, remembered the novelist and agony aunt as "very clever, quite quiet and keen to learn."

Rosemary Schofield, 80, of Woodstock Road, Deal, lived in the next room to her at the London Road hospital in 1947, in the times before the NHS.

Mrs Schofield said: "Claire must have only been 16 then and in those days the hospital was a training school. She seemed happy in Deal.

"Her maiden name was Chetwynd and we called her Chet. She wasn't very friendly with her family so at Christmas most of us sent her cards because she never had post."

After being friends for a year, the young Claire Rayner moved to another hospital. The two wrote to each other regularly, up until four years ago when the former broadcaster and journalist became unwell.

"I was surprised she became so famous. She wasn't boisterous in Deal. When someone at the Friends of the Hospital found out about our letter writing, I was asked to to see if she would like to open the hospital fete, which she did in 1992 when we met up again."