ENA Hatton never expected to reach her 100th birthday.

She experienced bombing in the Second World War and then had a brush with breast cancer in her 30s, resulting in major surgery.

But 40 of her family members and friends were with her to see the start of yet another new decade.

Royal Wootton Bassett Mayor Steve Watts and town crier Owen Collier joined the crowd at the Marsh Farm Hotel for the celebration, which included a birthday card from the Queen.

Ena, of The Mulberrys, said: “It was lovely, it really was nice to have all my family and friends celebrate with me. I don’t see them very often because they live in Plymouth so it was great they came up.

“I didn’t expect to reach 100, my mother Emma reached 95 and my dad Thomas made 75. I’ve lived the longest out of my family.”

She is the youngest of four, but her three brothers Fernley, Ronald and Freddie all died in their 50s.

Ena from Mevagissey in Cornwall had her own hairdressing business in Wembley before she met and married Lesley Hatton, who died three decades ago.

Life had already thrown her a few curve balls.

She told the Adver: “I was 20 when the war broke out and it was very sad. Two ladies lived by me and we stuck together whilst the men fought in the war.

“We would go out in the morning to the factory and the bombs would start dropping and we had to wear metal helmets but it’s amazing that most of our friends were okay. One or two of them did have their houses bombed.

“When the Germans would drop a bomb it would take a whole street and everybody in it, it was a really sad time and I was really lucky.”

She still remembers the day her brothers left to fight in the war.

“I was horrified, my dad volunteered and I asked my mum where my brothers had gone and told me they’d gone to become soldiers.

“We had to have ration books and you couldn’t get a thing without them. There was just enough for all of us, it was things like butter and milk and bread. I wish I’d saved that book as something to show and to remember by.”

Both her parents died from cancer and Ena was diagnosed with it in her 30’s. This resulted in her left breast being removed and surgery on her shoulder.

But she does have a secret to a long and happy life.

“I would say it’s being a vegetarian,” she said. “When my mum used to feed me, she would put the meat first on the spoon and then the vegetables in front. She would tell me ‘You would munch on the vegetables but as soon as you got to the meat you’d spit it in my face’.

“I could cook the meat, I didn’t mind that but not eating it or going into the butchers.”

The last thing on her bucket list is to go back to visit Mevagissey.