THREE truly historic birthdays were celebrated at Haslemere’s Chestnut View care home on Tuesday.

Special guest was Haslemere Mayor David Round, who congratulated Doris Palmer on her 101st and Joan Bramley on her 97th, both birthdays falling on the same day, and also Kathleen Ward for reaching 106 on September 25.

Mrs Ward, who was born in Birmingham in 1912, remembers a Zeppelin flying overhead and her father taking aim at it with his air gun.

Aged six at the end of WW1 on November 11 2018, she recalled her parents going out to celebrate leaving their children in the care the maid Nelly, who could not resist joining the party, and was absent when they returned.

Nelly left the following day.

A fashion designer and a model, who featured in Marks and Spencer catalogues well into her 70s, she married in 1937 and had one son, Colonel Anthony Ward.

During WWII she remembered an unexploded bomb landing on the front drive, the iron gates being stolen, and taking her son to the air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden and placing a large saucepan over both their heads.

Widowed in 1965, she remained fiercely independent until Christmas 2017, with home care for just two hours a week before moveing from Cheam to Chestnut View after suffering a fall.

Now 101, Doris Palmer was made MBE for services to the Library Association of which she is an honorary fellow, having also worked as an industrial librarian.

Born in Poole, her memories of WWI were being made very aware of how many had lost their lives by her parents.

She also remembered very well a number of her school friends had lost their fathers.

She recalled never actually seeing her friend’s father though she heard him. He came back from the war, but had, like many, been gassed. That experience, reinforced by living through WWII, has led to an enduring hatred of war.

Now 97, Joan Bramley was born in Huddersfield. While working at a chemical company, she was recruited for wartime service at the top secret code breaking unit at Bletchley Park from 1940 until the end of the war where she was trained as a signaller. But she never spoke about what she did.

Mrs Bramley married Frank in 1953. He died two years ago, aged 94, and when her sister died in 2017, she moved from Yorkshire to Haslemere to be near her daughter Catherine and family.