Barbara Lockwood has spent her working life putting criminals behind bars but now the woman who used to head our CSI department is behind a bar herself.

WORK pressures can vary for many of us, but the transition from propping up murder investigations to keeping an even head-to-body ratio on a pint of bitter is a bigger jump than many face during their career.

Punters at New Calley Arms in Wanborough may still be learning more about the fair-haired landlady behind the bar, who has largely ridden in the back seat since she bought it with her son Jon Beeden last autumn.

But Barbara Lockwood, who spent the best part of 20 years with Wiltshire Police’s crime scene investigation department, has finally settled into a new routine at the Ham Road pub after taking redundancy from the force.

In reflecting on a career which made blood-drenched crime scenes and dead bodies the norm, the 58-year-old said it was a fantastic period in her life, doing work which ultimately brought some of the most loathsome criminals to justice.

Barbara, who lives in Whittingham Drive, Wroughton, with her husband and former copper David Lockwood, 56, decided to take her opportunity to leave the force as its forensics department began to collaborate more with neighbours from Avon & Somerset Police.

As director of forensics, she found herself further and further removed from the frontline, where she most liked being.

“It became more of a strategic role, but everyone who ever knew me knew I wanted to be in a white suit in a tent rather than sitting in a meeting,” she said.

“That’s the exciting part of it - if you get someone’s fingerprint at a burglary and identify them.

“At the end of the day, that was what I was interested in.”

Barbara has been the first forensic officer on the scene at a number of the town’s most infamous murders.

And much of the work she did in those crucial first hours after a crime was committed has been critical in providing justice for families torn apart by such incidents.

She was the crime scene manager during the investigation into Sian O’Callaghan’s murder in March 2011, a case which she said all the officers ‘ate, slept and breathed’.

In the more recent past, she was called in the early hours to investigate the alleyway where Aulton ‘Tom’ Rogers died and the house where Michael Redpath was found.

“I can only compare it with being a paramedic, who just tell themselves they are saving a life,” she said.

“By the time you get there, all the damage is done. You have to take it step by step to observe what’s gone on.

“You live and breathe how that person lived.

“You go back to basics: what’s been moved, what’s been touched?

“It didn’t affect me. I took a professional approach. There were times when children or babies were involved and I found it tough. There were occasions with people I knew too.

“But you just do it. The adrenaline kicks in and you just do it.

“For the one in the underpass, I was called in the early hours of the morning and I just worked through until the next day.

“You don’t want to miss anything.”

According to Barbara, the case involving Sian O’Callaghan not only captured a nation’s attention, but affected the police officers working around the clock to find her killer and bring Christopher Halliwell to justice. She was one of the first to assess the location Sian’s body was found in.

“It did become really personal because everyone felt like they knew her because it was such a detailed case,” she said.

“There was the hope we would find her and we almost felt, by the end, we knew her movements and lifestyle.

"That was a dreadful, dreadful case. She was such a young lady. We almost ate, slept and breathed her life.”

The CSI expert said the case which would stand out for her in years to come was that of Amanda Edwards, murdered in West Swindon and later found in a shallow grave in Malmesbury in 2004.

“We didn’t know what we were going to find. She was a young, beautiful lady as well,” she said.

As a mum to four young boys, when Barbara took the job on she never expected to cope, let alone get as far as she did.

So, how does she reflect on such a demanding job, which required long, hard shifts and which dragged her away from her young family on a regular basis?

“I have been asked, when I visit schools, if I have any regrets and I have to say ‘yes I do’,” she said.

“My kids would be the ones without their lunchbox sometimes, or their swimming kit.

“I remember one time, I had organised a birthday party for my youngest and I got called out to a murder. I missed that party and I will never get those years back.

“They’re all proud of me, but that’s a personal thing for me.”