VERA Prisk celebrated her 100th birthday last week surrounded by friends and family at the Speech House.

Vera spoke about her long life and said that she attributed her longevity to ‘just luck’.

Her family added that it was more like ‘total determination’ to have reached the milestone birthday.

She was born Vera Mary Fowler on June 12, 1919 In Southend-on Sea to parents Ethel and Stephen Fowler.

Her father, who was in the Church Army at the time and following his time serving in the Great War moved around a great deal and Vera found herself living in Stockton on Tees, Oxford, Portsmouth, Burnham on Sea, Bath and Putney.

As a result she and her younger brother Donald, who is now 97 and living in Somerset, attended 13 different schools before the age of 17.

In 1938 Vera attended Battersea Polytechnic and started studying on a household and catering management course only for it to be cut short by the onset of Second World War in 1939 when she moved to Coleford to join her mother and father, who by this time had been ordained into the Church of England as a curate at Coleford St. Johns Church.

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