A QUIET birthday party was held in a Blackdown Hills village bungalow on Wednesday (September 18) to mark Ruby Mather becoming a centenarian.

Family, friends, and neighbours attended the 100th birthday party for Ruby, who has lived in Hemyock all of her life.

Ruby, who is no longer well enough to leave her home, used to regularly play whist until recent years and earned herself a reputation in the area for the high standard of her play.

She was married for 71 years to her husband Sam, who died in 2017 at the age of 97, and has four children Mary, Joan, Terry, and Raymond.

Ruby, nee Grainger, and Sam, were known locally for having a pet parrot which liked drinking tea.

The couple met at Taunton Railway Station at the beginning of the Second World War as Ruby, aged 16, was waiting for her sister, and Sam was 21 and undertaking military training at the town’s Sherford Camp.

Their romance bloomed as they exchanged letters over the next four years until they married in St Mary’s Church, Hemyock, in October, 1945, after Sam was demobbed.

Sam survived being shot through the chest on Christmas Day, 1944, and was then stationed in Stratford-upon-Avon, from where he would take a train to Taunton to hitchhike to Hemyock to see Ruby.

He was awarded France’s Chevalier of the Order National de la Legion d’Honneur, the country’s highest medal, in 2016 in recognition of his war service in aid of the French.