Former dinner lady and darts player Gwen Shearer marked her hundredth birthday with two parties and surrounded by her family and friends.

Gwen, of Tavistock, enjoyed gatherings at the Tavistock Parish Centre and at the Stannary Brewery, complete with a birthday cake, balloons and buffet, to celebrate a full life bringing up her sons and working when not engaged in family life.

She moved to Tavistock from Ilfracombe where she had relatives and had holidayed and where romance blossomed on meeting her late husband John, a high street butcher, who who died from cancer He served in the Fifteenth Scottish Reconnaissance Corps in World War II and was believed to have been among the first of the Allied troops to cross the Rhine.

Gwen is well known in Tavistock, where she has at various times worked as a dinner lady, cleaner at two schools (including in teachers’ homes), a factory and several shops and as a shop assistant in Tavistock. She moved to Tavistock after marrying John in 1945 because he took up a new job in the town as a butcher with Dawes of West Street, which had a house with the position. At one time there were seven members of the family living in this tied two-bed Bedford Fitzford Cottage in Tavistock.

Gwen worked in Tavistock for Lawsons (homeware), Camelot (jewellers), Cooks, Faswells factory and the former Tavistock School and Mount Kelly College.

Before moving to live with John in Ilfracombe she lived in Middlesex and briefly served in the WRENS (the Women’s Royal Naval Service ) and also worked at the National Records Office in Whitehall.

Gwen said: “I liked working in the records office because I saw lots of soldiers during the war. But my heart was with John, so I was very well behaved. I met him while I was on holiday seeing relatives. He was with his friends and we were walking along when he asked me if I was following him in a.jokey way.

“I quickly replied that ‘no but you can follow me’. Which he then did and we walked up the big hill in Ilfracombe together. From then on we got to know each other and of course we got married and had four boys and a very happy life. He had been a butcher since he was 14 and we later got a regular supply of meat as a family and moved to Tavistock because of his job which he learned at an abattoir. So, butchery did influence our lives, including providing us with a home in Tavistock. But it was very small when our family expanded.”

Gwen is mother to Michael (who died aged 54), Brian, a retired bank manager and former Tavistock FC player in the Western League, and Tony, who used to work for West Devon Borough Council, and Peter, a retired salesman for Fairway Furniture. She has nine grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.

One of her favourite pastimes was playing darts for the Edgcumbe Arms in Milton Abbot: “I can’t throw any more, but it was a good social life.”