Morecambe great-grandmother will be serenaded by socially distanced family as she turns 100

Doris Cornell is 100 on Wednesday June 3, and will be celebrating at the Mayfair Residential Care Home in Morecambe, where she is now a resident, having spent a most of her adult life living in Hest Bank, Torrisholme and Bare.

Doris was born in Nelson to parents who were badly affected by the economic collapse of the cotton mills in Lancashire and who, because of family connections and the possibility of work, chose to relocate to Kendal.

Doris spent her formative years in Kendal. With the advent of World War Two she signed up for the NAAFI. Her work in this organisation was based in camps in the north west of England, and she fondly remembers time spent at Barrow-in-Furness, Heysham and the Winter Gardens during war time

She was very well respected and regarded highly enough to earn significant promotion to manager – an achievement she was, and still is, very proud of given her lowly beginnings.

Doris met Albert Charles Cornell (always known as Chris) at the end of the war. After a short courtship they were married at Kendal Parish Church in August 1946.

She went on to have four healthy children, raising them successfully in what were difficult post war years.

In the decades that followed Doris has not only been a wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother but a person who has made a contribution to wider society, working as an auxiliary nurse, a shop assistant, and in her more senior years a volunteer charity worker.

For Doris, family is all and so, disappointingly, the celebratory party that was planned for her has had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and its lockdown restrictions.

However, her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and close friends will be standing outside the Mayfair on Wednesday afternoon with banners and balloons, singing Happy Birthday to celebrate a remarkable lady’s 100th birthday.