A beloved great-great grandmother from Stroud, Joyce Mills, celebrated her 100th birthday yesterday with her family at a care home in Quedgeley.

Family garbed in aprons, gloves, masks and visors, were allowed to bring cake and balloons to Chestnut Court Care Home.

Mrs Mills has three children, eight grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

“She is the most loving, caring, and inquisitive lady. Joyce is so bubbly and friendly, she will chat to anyone,” said her granddaughter Nikki Fletcher.

“She’s taught us to be ourselves and to never change for anybody, and to live life to the fullest, to let people know your feelings and never hold anything back.”

Mrs Mills took the bus from her home in Cashes Green to Stroud every day until she was 92 for coffee at the Salvation Army, Fifteen Bistro or Bedford Street.

She was born Joyce Driver on December 3, 1920, when David Lloyd George was Prime Minister and women under 30 still could not vote.

The war had ended two years prior and the League of Nations had just been inaugurated in Paris.

In 1939 she married Robert Mills, a bus driver from Chepstow better known as Charlie, and she still jokes that the bus drivers in Stroud are her boyfriends.

Mrs Mills worked as a weaver in Ham Mills, Thrupp, and then for Marling and Evans in Ebley Mill.

“She was always someone I could go to as a child growing up, she’d always cover for me and look after me,” said Mrs Fletcher.

“She always said the more people you talk to and the friendlier you are, the more you get that back.”

Mrs Mills is now a regular at Uplands Day Centre, where she’ll be returning for coffee after a short stay at Chestnut Court.