CHIRPY Mabel Allanson started her 100th birthday celebrates early this week enjoying a sherry toast with her 99-year-old friend Elsie Calvert.

Mabel, who celebrates her milestone birthday tomorrow (Thursday) is a resident at a home where she worked for many years when it was the site of Pickering's former workhouse and later a children's home.

Born at Newbridge, Mabel and her late husband George, who worked for The Duchy of Lancaster at Pickering, lived in Park Street.

As a young woman she worked at a blacksmith's shop near Pickering's Station Hotel and later as a bank clerk for Barclays. She and her husband were married for nearly 50 years before his death.

She worked in the laundry at the imposing Victorian house, 5 Whitby Road, Pickering, and its name and address was retained when the new old people's home was built by North Yorkshire County Council's social services department in the 1970s.

"I never thought I would be coming back here to the new home after spending so many years working in the workhouse and the children's home, " said Mabel.

She is an avid follower of the television soaps Emmerdale and Coronation Street - "I just can't miss those!"

Meanwhile, a well-known horse breeder and exhibitor, Emily Ward has celebrated her 100th birthday.

Mrs Ward, who now lives in Beechwood Place Nursing Home, Malton, was renowned in the horse world for her hunters and with her sister, the late Mrs Muriel Leonard, won many awards.

A long-standing friend, Martin Fargher of Welburn, said she had once bred a Royal Show winner, Waterfront, and had also won trophies at the Great Yorkshire Show. As well as breeding hunters she also bred ponies and rode with the Middleton Hunt. In her younger days when she lived near Hornsea. She rode with the Holderness Hunt.

She and her late husband, William, farmed at Bog Hall Farm, Coneysthorpe, and later at Brandreth Farm and Chapel Farm, Bulmer.

Mrs Ward was also a leading puppy walker for the Middleton Hunt for some 40 years and rode in point to point meets, said Mr Fargher. "Horses were her life before she retired and she was a keen gardener up to the age of 99."

Mrs Ward, who is now acutely deaf, received telegrams from The Queen and the Secretary of State for Pensions, John Hutton as well as congratulations from Ryedale MP John Greenway at Beechwood Place where her milestone birthday was celebrated with relatives and friends as well as other residents in the home.