ANNIE LUMLEY, the widow of a North Yorkshire farmer, has died aged 100.

She was born at Carperby, in Wensleydale and, from the age of ten, helped her widowed mother scrub floors at The Friends' meeting house and chapel in the village.

She left school at 14 and went into service at West Witton, beginning as a scullery maid and later rising to chamber maid and middle maid.

She married her late husband Maurice, known as Mont, at the village church in Aysgarth in 1934, where she was a member of the choir and a Sunday school teacher.

After their wedding, they moved to a farm at Fearby, near Masham, where Mr Lumley had taken the tenancy.

In 1958, they bought and moved to another farm at Crakehall, near Bedale. Mr Lumley died in 1964.

Since 1991, Mrs Lumley had lived at The Millings residential home, in Bedale.

At her 100th birthday party, she did not want gifts, but asked for donations that went to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, as did donations at her funeral.

She leaves a son, a daughter, five grandsons and eight great-grandchildren.