SETTLE resident Ivy Popplewell, and member of the Settle United Reformed Church has celebrated a milestone birthday.

Mrs Popplewell (nee Hughes) who now lives at Anley Hall, was 100 on February 28 and celebrated the event with her family and friends.

She was born in Blackley, in north Manchester, and lived there with her mother, father and younger sister Dorothy.

As a girl she helped in her parents’ sweet shop, and then on leaving school she went to work, like many local girls, in the Crumpsall Biscuit Works.

During this period she met Jack Popplewell through the rambling club associated with St Peter’s Church, in Blackley.

At the outbreak of World War Two she still worked at the biscuit works but joined the fire watch team, looking out from the factory roof for fires started by the many bombing raids on this industrial area of Manchester.

She also kept in touch with Jack, who had enlisted in the Royal Air Force, even when he was posted overseas to serve in the Far East.

After his demobilisation and return from India, Ivy and Jack were at last married in 1946, and lived for a time in nearby New Moston.

Their first son, Keith, was born in 1947. In 1949 the couple and their son moved to Edinburgh, the first of several moves occasioned by Jack’s career in the civil service.

Their second son, Brian, was born in 1952, but it was typical of Mrs Popplewell that just a few months later she hosted a houseful of friends and neighbours to watch the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II as they had manage to acquire one of the first television sets in Edinburgh.

The family moved back south to first Altrincham and then Appleton in north Cheshire in 1954. Mrs Popplewell and the family made many friends in and around Appleton, in Ivy’s case largely through the Young Wives group in Stockton Heath Methodist Church, and also through working in the local library for many years.

Another, final, career move for Jack took the family to live in Formby on the Lancashire coast in 1969 and Mrs Popplewell took the opportunity to work in a local playgroup – work which she truly loved, and when the proprietor retired a few years later she took over the business.

Her husband had just retired around this time and enthusiastically supported the venture with his admin and accounting experience, and Mrs Popplewell successfully ran the playgroup for several years before retiring herself and passing it on in turn to one of her staff in the mid ‘70s.

By now enthusiastic members of the Southport Archery Club, Mr and Mrs Popplewell moved to Southport where they lived until Mr Popplewell died in 1993.

Soon after, Mrs Popplewell moved to live in Settle close to the home of her son Brian and his wife Sue where she lived at Abbeyfield House care home for 18 years before moving to Anley Hall in 2013 where she is a popular resident, entertaining staff with her humour.

Mrs Poppplewell also has three grandsons, Stuart, Simon and Marc, and a granddaughter, Nicola.