CATHERINE Barrington-Ward, who has died from acute myeloid leukaemia at the age of 70, was the last principal of Beechlawn Tutorial College in Park Town, Oxford.

When the college was absorbed by D’Overbroeck’s in 1989, she became a director of studies, supervising students and teaching history and art history.

She had previously taught sixth-form history part-time, mainly for Beechlawn at home but also for nine years at Headington School.

She juggled this work, apparently effortlessly, with meeting the needs of her growing family.

With her warm personality, sense of humour and wide range of interests, she was seen as a gifted teacher, encouraging teen-agers, whether high-flyers or not, to grow in maturity and make the most of their abilities.

Brought up in Bristol, she read history at St Anne’s College, Oxford.

After a year as an archive trainee at the Bodleian Library, she decided to take the Oxford University diploma in education.

After her retirement in 1998, she took a foundation art course.

Mrs Barrington-Ward, who lived in North Oxford, was a churchwarden at St Giles’ Church in Oxford from 2001 to 2008, then secretary of the parochial church council.

She helped to raise money to repair the chancel roof and to restore the tomb of the Oxford master mason and architect, John Townesend, in the churchyard.

She compiled a new guide book, tracing the way that St Giles’ Church had evolved in response to religious and social change.

In 1964, she married Mark Barrington-Ward, editor of the Oxford Mail from 1961 to 1979.

She leaves her husband, four children – Olivia, Hester, Robert and Arthur – and eight grandchildren.

Sir Hugo Brunner, former Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, said: “I knew Catherine mainly as a member of the St Giles’ Church community. She was a really wonderful person to work with, positive, always ready to turn her hand to any task. Above all, she seemed to me to practise well what Jesus taught.”

The funeral will be at St Giles’ Church on Monday at noon.