PRINCESS Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, who died last Friday aged 102, will be remembered with an exhibition at St James's School in West Malvern.

The Queen's aunt was a pupil at the private girls' school from 1915 to 1919 and the school has a collection of royal memorabilia including paintings and family photographs.

Born Lady Alice Christabel Montagu-Douglas-Scott, third daughter of the seventh Duke of Buccleuch and ninth Duke of Queensberry on Christmas Day 1901, she took the title of Duchess of Gloucester after marrying Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the third son of George V and Queen Mary.

As a member of the royal family, she was committed to public service, a side of her character which was already in evidence as a young girl at school in Malvern.

In a history of St James's School, its founder Alice Baird, who was headmistress during the princess's time there, described her as having a "warm heart that showed itself in practical ways".

During the flu epidemic that followed the First World War, she organised her fellow pupils and took over the work of the maids who were ill. She also spent time in her dormitory knitting for the Red Cross and prisoners of warm, as well as representing the school at hockey and cricket.

When she married the Duke of Gloucester in 1935, the school sent her a book of photographs of St James's and bound copies of the school magazine. In return, the princess sent pieces of royal wedding cake to her former teachers. She was married in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, with the Queen and Princess Margaret as bridesmaids.

Princess Alice enjoyed drawing and painting and some of her earliest watercolours featured the gardens at St James's School.

She went on to exhibit her work in London and the school owns two of her landscapes, including one painted on a visit to Kenya.

"We have all sorts of things in the school's archive relating to the princess," said the current headmisstress Rosalind Hayes. "We thought it would be nice to make a small exhibition of them for pupils and parents."

The princess maintained her links with the school and opened its theatre in 1962.

On one of the school's photographs of Princess Alice with her two sons are the words "No daughters to send to St James's yet".

The princess's eldest son, Prince William died in a plane crash in 1972 and her husband in 1974. Her second son, Prince Richard, is the current Duke of Gloucester. She is also survived by her three grandchildren.