POET and haberdasher Mavis Turton celebrated her 100th birthday on Saturday with a waltz.

Putting her long life down to sheer hard graft and the will to stay alive Mavis told everyone at her party that she was fully intending to see her 200th birthday.

"I love life and want to carry on living," she said.

"I was always fit when I was younger and used to swim and do a lot of man's work. I sometimes think I might have been born a man because I loved doing man's work. Apart from the sewing, of course. If I wanted something I would do it; I could do building work if my husband couldn't.

"I shall live to be 200-years-old if I put my mind to it."

Born in Dryden Street in 1915, Mavis spent her years sewing and stitching dresses worn at weddings and parties around the town from the age of 14, taking her first job at Robinson's Haberdasher in Curtis Street.

After stints at Garrards during the war and a shirt factory in Morrison Street, Mavis and husband Charles moved nine times before arriving at Epworth Court on October 7, 1988.

She was an accomplished poet with a great love of the written word, though her eyesight has now begun to fail her.

"I used to write a lot of poetry, and I am very fond of that. I like any kind of poetry but I can't read it these days ," she said.

Enjoying a visit from Deputy Mayor Eric Shaw Mavis said: "It's all very exciting. I am having a lovely time."

Mavis, nee Westall, survived her older sister Maude and husband Charles, but had friends and surviving family, niece Shirley Willis, to share the occasion.

"I used to make all my own clothes as well. I never bought a dress in my life, not until I got old. I would do people's wedding dresses and evening wear; anything they asked for. It was like a hobby for me, and I was a very good sewer.

"I think I wore the sewing machine out in the end."

Shirley said her aunt had always been fit and full of life.

"She was always working hard and was a lot of fun," she said. "She worked from when she was 14 until she was 60, and she drove a car until she was 94.

"I do think there are good genes, her sister lived to be 92, and her mother was about 91 when she died."

On show at Epworth Court were historic articles about Mavis and her career fashioning clothes for Swindon.

When she was 85, Mavis told the Advertiser about the scene in the town when she was young.

"I reckon there were more than two dozen small, individual fashion shops in the town centre and Old Town in those days," she said.

"Not all were privately owned, but they all sold different clothes. You knew then if you bought a dress or suit for a special occasion, you weren't going to meet someone else wearing an identical garment. That's more than you can say now, with most Swindon people buying their clothes from chain stores."