A popular sub-postmistress who ran a friendly community post office with her husband for 13 years has died.

Suzanne Holmes was 64 when she passed away at The Martlets Hospice, Hove, from lymphoma, a form of cancer.

She and her husband David used to run the sub-post office in Havelock Road on the corner of Lucerne Road, Preston Park, Brighton.

It was the personification of a friendly, efficient and helpful community post office. When it closed on April 12, 2003, it marked the end of 153 years of a post office being on the site. It is now an art workshop and gallery.

Almost 200 residents attended a farewell party at the post office, where Mr and Mrs Holmes lived above the shop. They moved to a new home at Saltdean 15 months ago.

Mrs Holmes was born in Cromer, Norfolk, and worked for Lloyds Bank in nearby Sherringham, where she learnt her clerical skills.

She met her husband while he was helping his parents look for a retirement home in Norfolk and surveyed the property in which Suzanne was living with her father.

The couple decided to move to Brighton and run their own post office, which was something Mrs Holmes had always wanted to do.

The couple ran the Havelock Road Post Office from September 1989 until May 2003. For a short time afterwards they worked at the post office in St George's Road, Kemp Town, Brighton.

Mrs Holmes was an efficient sub- postmistress, which allowed her husband to do a lot of work for the Federation of Sub-Postmasters as president of the Brighton branch, helping scores of other sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses.

He said: "I could not have done it without Suzanne. She was one of life's unsung heroes, efficiently getting on with the job and never making a fuss."

The couple have a son, Alex, and a daughter, Ann-Marie.

Many friends and family attended the funeral service at Woodvale Crematorium, Lewes Road, Brighton, yesterday.