A devastated mother has paid tribute to her 16-year-old daughter after she died in her sleep days before Christmas.

Hannah Blowers, a former Plume and Purleigh Primary pupil, was described by her mum as a “beautiful, wonderful, caring, considerate, amazing and unique daughter”, after her unexplained death on December 19.

Mum Sara Burrell, 39, said the “kind-hearted” teenager lived in her own “Hannah bubble”.

Sara, of Fambridge Road, Maldon, said: “If you said to Hannah you can’t do it, she would do it anyway.

“If you said it wasn’t safe, she would still show you she could do it.”

Despite struggling with literacy throughout school, Hannah passed GCSEs last summer and was studying for higher grades in English and Maths.

But her real love was for horses, leading her to enrol in Equestrian Studies at Hadlow College in Kent.

Sara said: “She had problems reading and writing, she always had to work at it, but with riding she would be out there in the snow, tacking up a horse.

“She would fall off and break something and say ‘it hurts to breathe, but it doesn’t hurt to ride’.”

To reflect her love of animals, Hannah will wear her riding gear in a coffin covered with horses at her funeral.

The teenager, who helped care for Sara, who suffers from MS, also convinced her mother to start looking after guide dog puppies.

Sara said: “We would be Facetiming and she would say: ‘Hi Mum, love youMum, where’s the dog?’ “She was friends with just about everyone. She made friends so easily.

“She was a typical Leo, stubborn, never wrong, she had courage and spunk.”

Hannah loved to travel and wanted to visit Australia or America.

Sara described her, and brother Marcus, 15, as “always kind”.

She said: “She made me very proud over the 16 years, for so many different things.

“I loved her and I’m missing her like hell. She was an amazing person who changed the lives of everyone around her.

“She couldn’t see what everybody else saw in her.

She always saw herself as something so different.

“It was a pretty amazing 16 years. I wish it had been longer, although I don’t know how she would have carried on packing it all in.”

She added: “Everywhere I look she is there.

“The worst thing is her Christmas presents are here, because we don’t know what to do with them.

Hannah’s father, Brian Blowers, said he had lost the “most amazing, beautiful and special daughter”, whom he would love forever.