He said that internal head injuries among elderly patients, unlike younger victims, can often resolve themselves and said Mrs Potter would never have survived surgery.

The ceiling collapse that caused her death was blamed on dry and wet rot which riddled the ancient supports above the bay window at the side of the Grade II-listed building.

Philip Wright, a specialist engineer from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), said: “This could have happened at any time.”

But he said a massive leak in Mrs Potter’s room, directly above the lounge, some nine days before the tragedy, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.

Water cascaded from a broken tap in her bedroom, down into the lounge ceiling and on to the rotten bay window.

No checks were carried out on the window ceiling after the leak and James Mutch, one of the care home’s joint owners, said he saw no need to carry out a major check of the ceiling’s integrity in the lounge or order a safety check on the lounge’s electrics.

But yesterday Mrs Potter’s son, Bill Kirk , asked Mr Wright, as a HSE expert, whether checks should have been carried out.

Mr Wright agreed they should have but said he was unsurprised they were not. Most homes, even in ancient buildings, would be unlikely to carry them out, he said.

But he suggested that, in order to meet British Standards code of practice, routine checks of the window ceiling should have been carried out. He said flat-roofed windows were well-known problem areas in buildings of this age.

He added that repairs carried out at the home were “patch jobs” and were bound to fail at some stage.