EVA Pickles has died at a Fordingbridge rest home aged 109 just days after officially being named the oldest woman in the world.

Mrs Pickles came to Fordingbridge in 1951, 11 years after her husband died, and she remained in the area for the rest of her life.

Born in Swindon in 1891 when Gladstone was Prime Minister and Queen Victoria still had ten years to reign, Mrs Pickles began her working life as a milliner in a London store.

It was while on holiday in Torquay that she met Fred Pickles, a gents' outfitter, and they were married in 1926 at the Congregational Church in Fordingbridge where her family then lived.

The couple returned to Swindon where they ran a drapery business until 1940 when her husband died. The couple had no children.

Mrs Pickles continued to run the shop for 11 years before retiring and returning to Fordingbridge.

She looked after herself until shortly before her 99th birthday when increasing frailty forced her to move to the Waterside Rest Home in Whitsbury Road where she spent her remaining years.

Her death came just a few days after the Guinness Book of Records confirmed that Mrs Pickles was the oldest woman in the world.

Mrs Pickles died a few days before the world's oldest man died in America aged 111.