Pauline Clayden, a dancer who helped form the core of the Sadler's Wells Ballet in the decade after the Second World War, has died aged 103.

Clayden belonged to the generation of dancers who carried the company through the postwar years, leading up to its royal charter in 1956. She was never a principal. Yet she was one of those talented, adaptable and highly valued soloists without whom, as her obituarists note, ballet companies can never survive.

Her repertoire ranged widely. She danced a snake in Tiresias, a goat in Sylvia and an autumn fairy in Frederick Ashton's Cinderella. She would appear in the corps de ballet and step out of it to dance leading roles — a measure of the versatility that defined her career.

It says much about her talent that she often stepped into roles created for Margot Fonteyn. For Ashton, the company's choreographer, she was the ideal dancer to do so. In a company built around Fonteyn's star quality, Clayden supplied the dependability and craft that allowed the repertory to function night after night.

Clayden's death closes a chapter in the history of British ballet. The dancers who founded the Sadler's Wells tradition — and who earned the company its royal charter — have now nearly all gone. Her generation's contribution, long overshadowed by its principals, remains the scaffolding on which the Royal Ballet was built.