JANE Young has been giving a helping hand to the homeless since she was a teenager, but she is now closing the door on that part of her life.

The 69-year-old has been labelled an angel by people in Royal Wootton Bassett because she has spent years taking people in, cooking meals and providing tents for them to sleep in.

When she was just 10 and living in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, she helped others by going out and getting shopping for the elderly living in her building.

But when she landed on the streets at 16-years-old she decided to help those who were homeless. She said: “Years and years ago I was homeless myself, not for very long, but I slept in the public toilets. I left home because me and my stepfather didn’t get on and I only left the house with a basket full of clothes, that’s all I had. But I was lucky that I had a job and then a friend took me in.”

She decided to move to Royal Wootton Bassett over 30 years ago with her four children and remarried.

But that didn’t stop her from giving what she could to others: “One day my son brought a lad home and he just told me that their friend had been kicked out and it was hammering it down with rain. I told them to go grab him and I just gave him shelter and looked after him and now he is married. I did that a lot I would just look after people and just helped to get back on their feet.”

Jane joined Swindon Homeless Volunteers two years ago, a Facebook group where they would meet up and cook meals for anyone who was sleeping rough.

Later she joined another group, Swindon Caring Hearts and after six months started her own group, Helping Homeless. “I decided to branch out and help people on my own," she said. "I started getting donations from Aldi and other people. I would make the food from them and then I would take it to the homeless people.”

Since then she has been overwhelmed with the donations she would get as she saw her group grow from 30 people to over 300: “The people of Royal Wootton Bassett are so friendly and so nice and even if they have nothing then they would still help people who have less than them.”

But now she is preparing to retire. “I’m disabled I have heart problems so it can be hard and what stopped me from doing more is that my vertebrae disc slipped. In a few months I will be 70 so it’s time for me to stop and I’m still grieving from that decision.”

She added: “It’s not me, it’s those who have helped me to help the homeless. Without them I couldn’t have done it.”