A DURSLEY woman celebrated her 105th Birthday.

Nora Atkins was born on Friday, October 15, 1909, in Dursley, and celebrated more than a century of life with a tea party.

Mrs Atkins now resides at the Hollies Care Centre at Littlecombe where she celebrated with fellow residents and staff on Wednesday, October 15.

Mrs Atkins lived in the West Country all her life. As a child she attended Dursley Council School and, after she left, found work in the local belt factory on Bolton Lane.

She met her husband, Charles Atkins, when they were at school. The two also attended the same chapel, and they were wed in Dursley Methodist Church in 1933.

Together they raised one son, Anthony, who also lives in the town. Charles sadly passed away 20 years ago.

Anthony Atkins said: “She has never wanted people to know her age or make a fuss and bring attention with celebrating her birthdays.”

Mrs Atkins is very proud of her Cotswold heritage and celebrated her 105th birthday in her hometown, in the heart of the Cotswolds.

Staff at the Hollies Care Centre said: “Nora is an absolutely delightful lady and it has been an absolute pleasure to look after her.

“She can tell lots of really interesting stories about experiences she’s had throughout her life.”

Being born in 1909, Mrs Atkins saw the vast majority of the 20th century, including a range of events, both positive and negative, that shook the world.

Famed Irish painter Francis Bacon was born in the same month as Mrs Atkins and, born only a few months earlier, the English tennis player and Wimbledon champion Fred Perry.

She would have been aged only three at the time the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Then, in 1914, before Mrs Atkins even turned five, Gavrilo Princip and the Black Hand assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, one of the catalysts of the First World War, which would engulf Europe from July 28, 1914, until November 11, 1919, when she was nine.

In adulthood she would live through a series of world-changing events including the Second World War, the invention of the television, the moon landing, the assassination of John F Kennedy, the rise of The Beatles, England’s first female Prime Minister, and the turn of the Millennium.