AN UPPER Clatford mother has paid tribute to her ‘gentle and kind’ son whose inquest took place last week.

Christine Bonwick’s son Laurence Nolan died in 2014, seven years after being badly beaten in a burglary which left him with permanent brain damage, an inquest heard last week.

The coroner delivered a narrative verdict into the death of Laurence Nolan, who died aged 47 in the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in August 2014 after years of suffering with the impact of his attack and brittle diabetes.

Laurence was born on 16 March 1967 along with his twin sister Lorraine in Farborough Hospital Kent.

The pair were the first two of four siblings.

Laurence went on to become a father of four himself, as well as a grandfather of three.

He went to boarding school for a while in Torrington.

‘A kind-hearted fella’

After school he followed in his dad’s footsteps and went into the building trade.

Christine said: “He had a few other jobs, he worked at the Pig and Whistle in Basingstoke. He moved about a bit.

“If I needed him he used to walk from Atholl Court to where I am.

"He used to mow the lawns for the old ladies.

“He was quite a kind-hearted fella.

"He used to say in hospital, ‘when I’m better I’ll come home and do your garden mum’.”

Just before midnight on February 18, 2007 Laurence opened the door of his Atholl Court flat in Kingsway Gardens to two armed robbers, who hit him over the head several times with a metal bar.

“All he did was open his front door, people do that all the time,” said Christine.

“His twin sister Lorraine was up all night on the night he was attacked, she said I couldn’t go to sleep it was as if she felt something wasn’t right.

“They had tubes coming out of his head and all sorts, I thought ‘oh my God’.

“I lost him that day he was attacked. He was in Southampton for two to three weeks, then to Winchester Hospital for about a year, then to Bath for a year.

‘He was quite a character’

“Then he went from Bath to Glenside, which was like a nursing home, but more of a hospital environment, before settling at Rothsay Grange.

“When he was in Winchester hospital before he died, every day he used to come out, pass the nurses station and they would say where are you going and he would say mum.

“They would say no you’re not, and he’d open the door and go off on his chair so they go after him and bring him back in.

“He was still quite a character.

“When he was in ICU in Winchester all the girls cried when he left because he was part of the furniture.

“We all miss him and it seems quite strange, I mean the girls came down every month and they went to whatever hospital he was in to see him.

“I’m still getting used to the idea, but I can go up to see him and not break down now.”