Party time as Hartlepool great grandmother celebrates her 102nd birthday

Friends and family joined Kitty Dennis at Seaton Hall Residential Home in Hartlepool as she celebrated the milestone with a party.

The First World War was still raging in Europe when Kitty was born on March 28, 1917, and was one of five sisters and two brothers.

The family lived in Dent Street and Chatham Road, before Kitty married husband Jackie in 1940 and they then moved to Moor Street.

She has two children, five grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.

Kitty worked as a milliner, making hats in the former hat factory in the town’s Raby Road and also worked in insurance for the Co-op.

Kitty’s daughter Lynne, 70, told the Mail: “We had a party for her and with the family and the residents, with family travelling from Worcester and Peterborough, to join family members from Hartlepool.

“She was a great mam. She always dressed immaculately and when people would ask what’s the secret for her age she said it was ‘Oil of Ulay and a tipple of whiskey’, but she doesn’t drink anymore.

“When we were younger we used to have a wooden chalet in Hart and we used to spend the weekends and some holidays there and when we talk about that she says ’they were the good old days’.”

Kitty was born on the same day that the the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was founded, and just days after the birth of forces sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn on March 20.

Also in 1917, King George V issued a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor and he also established the the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).