A CHEERFUL great-grandmother celebrated more than a century of life with her friends and family.

Kath Bennet marked her 101st birthday with a party at the Quarry Mount care home in Old Town and received plenty of cards, flowers and gifts from loved ones.

Entertainer Ukulele Piddle sang songs, told stories and played music for the birthday girl and many guests.

Karen Meadowcroft, manager at the home, said: “She was really excited and grateful, it was a really happy day for her. Kath enjoyed the entertainment.

“Her family came in and out throughout the day to see her – her sister, her grandchildren, lots of loved ones, it was great.

“The staff enjoyed being able to make the day truly special for her and she was very thankful to us.

"She’s so lovely and has a great sense of humour – we call her our queen.

“Birthdays like this are quite rare, we’ve only had a couple of residents at the care home who were over 100 years old.”

The proud grandmother of four and great grandmother to 11, has decades of happy memories to look back on.

She first moved to Swindon with her husband George during the 1940s because of his work on the railways.

They spent decades of married bliss together in Whitby Grove, Rodbourne.

She worked on inspections at the Shorts Aircraft factory in Blunsdon until 1944, when she left the job to have her daughter Marlene and her late son Martin.

When the youngsters started school, Kath went back to work in her original career in the popular Swindon town centre shoe shop Freeman, Hardy and Willis. The fashion fan loved shopping for clothes.

She was born in Somerset in 1918 and worked as an assistant in a shoe shop in Frome before she married George in 1937.

The couple enjoyed many happy holidays in Eastbourne. After George died, Kath went on several other holidays with her family in Spain.

She later went to live at Haydon Court sheltered accommodation, where she was very proactive on the committee, helped to arrange bring-and-buys and other activities and acted as its treasurer.

She moved to Quarry Mount in June last year.