AN inquest has opened in to the death of a “beautiful and intelligent” teenager who battled anorexia...almost eight years after she died.

Averil Hart, 19, was found collapsed in her room at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Averil, who was a former Colchester Royal Grammar School student, was admitted to hospital in December 2012 and died eight days later.

She had been diagnosed with anorexia in 2008 and was voluntarily admitted to the eating disorder unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridgeshire in 2011.

She was discharged in August 2012 so she could take up her place at university but the coroner’s court was hold she had not hit her target weight of about 50kg.

Her mother Miranda Campbell said, in a statement read by the coroner, that Averil was a “beautiful, intelligent, incredibly witty fun-loving girl”.

In a diary entry of August 13, read to the inquest, Averil recorded her weight as 44.4kg.

Averil moved to Norwich on September 23 to start her creative writing degree course at UEA.

Her mother said Averil was “particularly concerned about how she would manage her meals”.

Averil wrote in her diary about falsifying her weight at weigh-ins and restricting what she was eating.

In an entry on October 5, she recorded her weight as 42kg.

On November 13, she wrote: “I can’t believe I’m still going, what I’m even running on any more.

“I just look thin and in pain. It makes me so sad.”

Mr Hart said his daughter was a black belt in karate and “incredibly intelligent”.

He said that, while Averil was an inpatient for ten months, she was weighed each morning under the same conditions.

She also had a meal plan and received treatment.

Cambridgeshire’s assistant coroner Sean Horstead asked Mr Hart what he expected Averil’s monitoring and treatment regime to be after her discharge from hospital.

“My expectation was it would be different but equally robust,” he said.

Mr Horstead is overseeing the separate inquests into the deaths of five women, including Averil, who died from eating disorders while under the care of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.

  • The inquest continues.