FORMER nurse Anne Milton - nicknamed Wiltshire's Mother Theresa - marked her 100th birthday with friends and family at Merlin Court care home in Marlborough.

Staff at the care home put together a collage of pictures of her career which was shown off during a party on her birthday, March 13.

The centenarian opened presents and her telegram from the Queen in front of family and friends.

Tanya Fields, recreation and leisure organiser at the care home, said: “She was absolutely ecstatic. She loved it.

“It was supposed to be going on for two hours but it went on for five which was so nice for her.”

Miss Milton trained in London and during the Second World War she worked in an emergency maternity hospital in Buckinghamshire.

After that she got a job in Battersea as a domiciliary midwife where she remembers cycling between five deliveries in one night.

In the 1950s she went to Indonesia and on returning to the UK in her forties she trained as a health visitor.

However, during her training she was asked to go to Cambodia to help set up a nursing health centre.

In 1972 Miss Milton was asked to move to Sri Lanka to given seminars to senior nurses.

She did two tours of duty in Sri Lanka and loved the country so much she continued to visit it up into her seventies.

Miss Milton also worked as the deputy county nursing officer for Wiltshire for three years in the early 1960s, joined the Queens Nursing Institute in London as an advisor and worked in Chiswick’s Polytechnic.

During her retirement she liked to travel and spend to time visiting Mother Teresa’s Orphanage and Hospices in Calcutta.

Miss Milton said that she feels very lucky in her varied career which she would not change and is glad she took full advantage of the opportunities.

Ms Fields said: “She’s just so lovely, so heart warming and affectionate.

“She doesn’t talk so her way of communicating is getting your hand to pull you in for a cuddle or to give you a smile.

“We call her Wiltshire’s Mother Teresa.”