Great-grandma celebrates 100th birthday in the same house where she was born

Great-grandma celebrates 100th birthday in the same house where she was born

Mangalore Today News Network

July 04, 2018: A great-grandmother who has never known the stress of moving home celebrated her 100th birthday in the same house where she was born.

Elsie Allcock was born in an upstairs bedroom in the house in Huthwaite, Nottinghamshire, on June 28 1918, just as the First World War drew to a close.

She went on to buy the property after her father’s death – paying just £250 for it in 1960 – and has never lived anywhere else.

Elsie celebrated the landmark birthday with a party on June 23 in her home, which is now worth £75,000.

She said: ‘I was the youngest of five children, four girls and one boy.


‘My mother and father came to live in Huthwaite in 1900 when my sister Emma was two years old.

‘My father was a coal miner and he worked at Blackwell Colliery. My mother was a hard working woman. She did washing five days a week for us and other people.

‘She had no washing machine in those days just a tub to boil clothes in. It was very hard work.

‘My sister Mary and I would take the baskets of washing back to the customers all ironed and ready to wear. All for half a Crown – that is two shillings and sixpence.’

Elsie and her husband Bill, who died of cancer in 1995, gradually updated their home over the years with the help of their builder sons Keith and Raymond.

Despite losing her husband, Elsie is still surrounded by a large family of two sons, six grandchildren and 36 great-grandchildren.

Raymond, 72, said: ‘She had always been happy here. It’s more convenience than anything, why would she want to move?

‘We knew everyone on that street at one time but now there are not even half a dozen.’

Elsie, the last survivor among the five siblings, admits the modest two-bedroom terrace home was a squeeze growing up, and remembers topping and tailing with her sisters.

When she left school aged 14, she stayed at home to help look after the family following the death of her mother Eliza in 1932.