Farmer's wife Peggy Taylor put the secret of a long life down to regular exercise when she celebrated her 100th birthday on June 29.

Mrs Taylor, who was born in Yatton Keynell, marked her big day with a tea party for family and friends at The Bluebell Lodge Care Home in Chippenham .

She said: “It is very nice to have so many people with you, and I feel lucky.

“It was lovely to have a card from the Queen but I do not feel old. You have to keep moving and you are lucky if you have good health.”

The former teacher, who went to private school in Biddestone and college in Malmesbury, lived in Yatton Keynell until she married John Taylor and moved to his 300-acre farm in Bath.

After school the young Mrs Taylor became a governess and taught several families in Chippenham’s surrounding villages. “I taught one family on a farm on the other side of Littleton Drew and I loved it,” she said.

“I would teach one set of boys in the morning, then cycle back across in the afternoon – it was quite a cycle.”

She loved being outdoors and spent a lot of time on her grandfathers’ farms. “I married a farmer in the end. We met at a 21st birthday party. It was a Friday night at Colerne and there was this group of farmers from Bath – John was one of those.”

They were married in Leigh Delamere church in 1932 and spent their honeymoon in Weston-super-Mare. They had two sons and a daughter.

“Not long before we got married my husband bought a lovely little two-seater car,” said Mrs Taylor. “We went off in that and it was super.”