A MEON Valley woman celebrated her 100th birthday at the hotel where she worked as a kitchen maid, 84 years previously.

Peggy Kirby, from Waltham Chase, marked the milestone with five members of her family at the New Place Hotel in Shirrell Heath, where she worked when it was a private family home belonging to the Franklyn family, of George Franklyn Tobacco Company.

Peggy has 10 nieces and nephews, 18 great nieces and nephews, 16 great-great nieces and nephews and three great-great-great nieces and nephews.

She attributes her long life in part to being Scottish.

Peggy said: “My advice for a long life would be to treat every creature, every person, the same way you would like to be treated yourself, and to be grateful for all the things around us which are so wonderful but cost nothing – the sun, the stars, the plants, the animals, the sea.”

Peggy started out as second kitchen maid at New Place in 1935, having moved from the highlands of Scotland to take up the post which she had seen advertised in The Lady magazine.

Working her way up to first kitchen maid, she worked from 7am to 10pm six days a week, with just one afternoon a week, plus every other Sunday afternoon, off. She was paid 12 shillings and sixpence a week.

When the Second World War came, the staff at New Place were dispersed to take up wartime duties, and Peggy worked in Wickham.

She was appointed cook and housekeeper at Wickham Lodge, which was repurposed as a home and school for refugee children from Southampton, Portsmouth, London and other cities.

She also served as a volunteer nurse, once travelling in an ambulance to Portsmouth, with bombs exploding around her, to bring a distressed lady in labour back to Rookesbury Park.

After the war, Peggy worked as cook and housekeeper at Shedfield House for the Phillimore family, serving them for more than five decades and continuing to help them out on an ad-hoc basis until she was approaching 90. She remains a great friend of the family.

New Place is in the midst of an upgrade, undergoing a £1.3 million refurbishment of its 110 bedrooms.

The house, designed in 1906 by architect Sir Edwin Lutyens for the Franklyn family, was given to Captain Henry Arden Franklyn and his new wife as a wedding present.