IT'S 25 years since Settle police officer Dot Phillips became the county's first female village bobby.

Dot, North Craven's best known police officer, took over the Horton-in-Ribblesdale patrol in July 1977.

Originally from Whitehaven, she was North Yorkshire's first woman village bobby and only the second in the country.

In the early Seventies WPCs were not allowed to carry handcuffs or a truncheon and were sent out with just a whistle and a radio, which suffered repeated blackouts due to the surrounding hills, leaving them dangerously isolated.

Prior to the introduction of the Equal Opportunities Act in 1974, the force limited the work of WPCs, paid them three quarters of the salary of their male counterparts and did not require them to work after 1am.

As Dot recalls: "If they took in a woman prisoner they used to have to get me out of bed!"

The introduction of the Act led to more women joining the force, but the average career span of the WPC was just two years, with officers leaving to get married or resigning when the equal opportunities legislation required them to work nights.

Dot spent 18 years as Horton's bobby, covering the area in her Mini van.

She says: "It was the only job I ever wanted to do. I love the excitement. You can plan what you are going to do and then it can just go out the window and something drastic happens."

Dot was involved in preparing the case for the coroner following the Clapham Woods gangland murder of the Sixties. Two prisoners had fallen out over a girlfriend while in jail and when they were released one took revenge on the other and shot and buried him at a remote farmhouse at Keasden.

The body was discovered by local character Rabbity Dick who contacted police, but despite a confession all was not plain sailing for the officers investigating the case.

Dot remembers: "They had to do a second post-mortem as police believed it had been a stabbing.

"The defendant confessed, but then said he had shot him. The pathologists had missed the bullet!

"It was lodged in his brain and the .22 shell later found in a hay barn."

Dot also attended the scene of the Dibbles Bridge crash, still the worst on record. There were numerous fatalities after a bus full of daytrippers plunged from the bridge.

Over the years Dot has been to countless car crashes and helped in the harrowing search for the missing schoolgirls who drowned in the River Ribble last year while on a school trip to Stainforth.

Before her appointment at Horton she worked from Skipton and Settle police stations for four years.

Dot retires from the police force next March after 30 years' service and says she will miss the job enormously.

However, she will then have more time to pursue her hobbies as Lady Captain at Settle Golf Club, a member of Austwick Tennis Club and Settle Badminton Club and to indulge her enthusiasm for skiing.

She is also planning to work overseas in a voluntary capacity.