"You just keep moving" - Chichester 100 year old celebrates centenary in style

The 100 year old, who was born in Vauxhall, moved to Chichester in 2000 and celebrated with friends at family at her home at Brampton Court, near Chichester train station.

Active, happy and healthy, Joan says the secret to her long life is to keep moving, for as long as possible. One of her favourite things to do in Chichester is pop her shoes on a take a stroll down by the canal: "I love walking. I really love walking. On Sundays, my son comes over and we walk through the Bishops Palace Gardens. When I was younger, we’d have these walking holidays – we go to Austria and Switzerland, and we used to love going there to see the mountains. It’s just the beautiful scenery, and there’s this lovely, relaxing feeling to it.”

She also makes sure to live as healthily as possible. She drinks very little (apart from apple juice), and has never smoked. “I took a few puffs, as you do, when I was a teenager. And I just remember thinking ‘oh my god this is vile!’ and that’s all I can put it down to; you just have to keep moving.”

Joan’s other great love is music; the 100-year-old is something of a G4 superfan, after first encountering the vocal quartet on Season 1 of the X-Factor and falling in love with their old-school style. “I love good music,” she says. “The classic stuff. I don’t like a lot of what’s out now, where the singers are all screeching and screaming into the microphone; a lot of what they make just doesn’t appeal to me now.”

Celebrating with her friends and family on Sunday, blowing out the candles on her cake and soaking up the nice weather was a pleasure all its own, and Joan said the only other thing she could wish for was for her husband to be there with her.

A Royal Marine during the Second World War, Ron passed away in 2016, and Joan still misses her walking partner: “I just wish he was here with us. We always used to celebrate by booking a show uptown; I still remember the first we ever saw; Ivor Novello, The Dancing Years.”