An ‘inspirational’ Malvern woman has celebrated her 103rd birthday.

Joyce Hines marked the milestone with tea and cake alongside fellow residents at the Storer Court care home in Geraldine Road.

Mrs Hines was born in Box Hill, Surrey in 1920 and moved to Malvern in 1935 when her father got a job as head gardener at Davenham, a mansion in Graham Road that is now a care home.

During the Second World War she worked in Link Top weighing sugar and cheese and it was there she met husband Bill.

Malvern Gazette: Joyce Hines with husband BillJoyce Hines with husband Bill (Image: NQ)

He had been evacuated from Dunkirk and sent to Malvern in order to recuperate.

Sadly, Bill was killed aged just 22, leading a platoon of men through a field of landmines in Italy.

Mrs Hines and her then 13-month-old daughter Diana moved in with Mrs Hines’ parents and her brother Frank Cooper.

'Just don't worry'

Mrs Hines continued to live with family until Frank’s death six years ago, when she moved to Storer Court.

“I didn’t see the point of getting a place just for the two of us,” said Mrs Hines. “We got on well with our family and lived with them quite happily.”

Mrs Hines spent most of her working life at Marie’s and then in the lingerie department at Brays in Malvern - and is still known to other residents at Storer Court as ‘Joyce the bra’.

Among her duties at Brays, she mended corsets and fitted women for bras after they’d had a mastectomy.

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“In our spare time we enjoyed going to the pictures,” she said. “We’d go twice a week, walking along Graham Road. “And we’d go to dances - and in those days the music was fine, not like now. It was super duper.”

Asked the secret of a long life, Mrs Hines credits homeopathic medicine for “keeping me going” and says daughter Diana is a great help, but her main bit of advice: “Don’t worry. You die if you worry and you die if you don’t, so I just let things wash over me.”

Staff at the care home say Mrs Hines is a lovely lady who is always smiling and asks staff how they are doing every morning.

“She’s an inspiration to us all,” they said.