Kentish Express Ashford & District
Care home celebrations for centenarian elsie
Family and friends gathered for the 100th birthday of widow Elsie Stewart.
They celebrated with her at Ashminster House Care Home at Clive Dennis Court in Willesborough.
She also received the customatory congratulatory telegram from the Queen.
Mrs Stewart was born in Edinburgh on May 1, 1916 and lived half her life there.
During her career she worked as a civil servant for the Ministry of Defence.
In her later years, Mrs Stewart lived in Folkestone, arriving at Ashminster House in 2012 with her husband Charles, who sadly died that year.
Mrs Stewart has one son, Derek, and a grandaughter, Rebecca.
Ashminster senior nurse Hannah de Mesa said: “She is a very cheerful lady who always has a smile on her face.”
Mrs Stewart was born during the middle of the First World War, a couple of months before the start of the Battle of the Somme.
Four days before her birth the Germans unleashed one of their most heavily concentrated gas attacks on Allied soldiers, at Hulluch, nearLens in Northern France.
She was also born the week after the Easter Rising, the historic Irish rebellion whose centenary was recently marked.
King George V was on the throne and Herbert Asquith was prime minister, the first of 19 Mrs Stewart has seen in office during her lifetime.