Most Sundays Ena walks to Trinity Church in Abingdon, as she has for many years, but this morning there was a special blessing for Ena Mitchell who is 100 years old. She got her telegram from the queen yesterday and at the church service Deacon Selina Nisbett told us a little of Ena’s story.

Ena’s husband went to serve in WWII and was killed in action in Belgium. As a consequence Ena found herself a single mum with a young daughter. Ena moved to Abingdon in 1954 to make a new life and things were not easy as some people were a bit snooty about single mums in those days.

Ena found work as the first female traffic warden in Abingdon, and sent her daughter to St Helen and St Katherine school, wanting to do the best for her. Her daughter later went to Australia. Her grand daughter Sarah, and great grand daughter Sophie flew over specially from Australia for the birthday (pictured with Ena above).

Ena has been a champion of war widows over the years. As a consequence she has met Prince Charles and been to 10 Downing Street. She is usually to seen at remembrance day in Abingdon laying a wreath at the war memorial (picture above from 2016). She sold poppies for 50 years.

She was also involved with children’s charities such as NSPCC over many years and there were colleagues from those charities at the service.

There were exactly 100 people at the service today. An amazing coincidence!