Tributes have been paid to a community stalwart and ‘amazing, wonderful and beautiful’ grandmother who helped raise thousands of pounds for charity.

Marion Richards, who lived in the same area of Stevenage for more than 20 years, worked at Symonds Green Community Centre and co-ran the Tuesday Blind Club.

She had been an active member of the Coreys Mill Lions Club since 1993 and helped organise car boot sales, race nights and took part in street collections.

Some of this money helped create the Lions Club visitors room at Lister Hospital.

Her daughter Tracy told the Comet: “She was just lovely, just everything you could want a mum to be. She was so warm and supportive and just gave everything she could. She was an inspiration.”

Marion was born in 1937 and after leaving school she worked for the Post Office as a telephonist.

She married Lyndon Richards in April 1958 and the couple went on to have five children of their own – Julia, Carol, David, Mark and Tracy – as well as adopting Andrew in 1969.

After the children left home, Marion moved with Lyndon, now 80, to the Symonds Green area of Stevenage.

She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2007 and with kidney cancer in April last year. She was cared for at Garden House Hospice in Letchworth prior to her death at the age of 77.

Symonds Green Community Centre manager Sandra King said: “I just loved her to pieces – she was a very special lady.

“We worked together for 12 years and were great friends in and out of work. She was so funny, warm and generous.”

At her funeral held at Harwood Park Crematorium on Thursday, granddaughter Eloise, aged eight, said: “You are the best nanny in the world because you are supernan and you are wonderful, beautiful and amazing.”