The family of 107-year-old Enid Pollard, of Calne, will celebrate her life at her funeral today.

Mrs Pollard, born in Leicestershire in 1901, was a month away from her 108th birthday when she died at the Great Western Hospital, Swindon, on August 5.

Nephew Phillip Tucker said:“She was an amazing woman and her mind was still very sharp.

“I am almost 83 and I have been in the habit of going down to see her about three or four times each year for many, many years.”

Before moving to The Firs residential home in Calne, Mrs Pollard lived alone at her home in Marsh Lane, Cherhill, until her late 90s.

Mr Tucker said: “She was looking after herself until then, and was renting a bungalow from her neighbours.

“They were very good to her and used to take meals around to her and invited her to their home. Enid was well into her 90s when she used to walk their dog around the field near their house.“ she married when she was 40 and moved to Cherhill with her husband William, whose sister lived in Calne.

One of seven siblings, Mrs Pollard had no children, but liked to keep in contact with her step grandchildren and nieces and nephews scattered all over the country.

During the second world war she worked in a munitions factory, her only job.

Mr Tucker said: “She said it was quite dangerous work and over the years there had been one or two explosions.

“Fortunately they did not affect her. Apart from that I do not think she did any work – prior to the war it was not the done thing for a woman from a fairly well-to-do family to do any work.”

Mrs Pollard said her secret to long life was a small whisky with her coffee every morning and a lot of walking.

She could remember squeezing tea from old tea leaves and sprinkling them on the carpet to pick up dirt when she was young, and said one of her best life experiences was flying in a plane when she was 19.

Mr Tucker said: “Obviously there were no sorts of airliners in those days and women did not fly, so this was a very big thing for her.

“We still have the ticket she was given for her flight with the Berkshire Flying School.”

Even at 107 she could say the alphabet backwards and enjoyed a ride in a Rolls Royce with a friend who came to her birthday party.

The funeral is at St James’s Church, Cherhill, where her father Henry Tucker is also buried.