A WOMAN died after falling down a flight of stairs at her Bridport home, an inquest was told.

Rozanne Chappuis, 63, was at home with husband Kevin when the fatal fall occurred at around 3.20pm on March 3.

Mr Chappuis said the couple had been to lunch with friends that day and his wife had consumed four glasses of wine, but he claimed she was not obviously affected by the alcohol.

He said that she had ‘jumped up from the settee’ to get a drink of water and go downstairs to the toilet when he had heard a ‘funny noise immediately followed by a thump’.

Mr Chappuis got up and found his wife lying at the bottom of the stairs leading down to the basement, with blood coming from her head where it had apparently struck a nearby radiator.

He rang for an ambulance and Mrs Chappuis was airlifted to hospital but it soon became clear that her head injuries were unsurvivable.

Dr Ian Mew from Dorset County Hospital said that, after she had spent some time in a coma, the time of Mrs Chappuis’ death was officially recorded as 2am on March 5.

Police were satisfied that there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death and Dorset Coroner Sheriff Payne recorded a verdict of accidental death.

However, he warned that alcohol was likely to be a contributing factor with toxicology reports indicating that the alcohol in Mrs Chappuis’ blood was around three-and-half times the drink driving limit at the time.

He said: “The verdict I am going to record is that she’s died as a result of an accidental fall, but a significant factor sadly is the alcohol in her system.”