A care home resident who was alive during the Spanish Flu recently celebrated her 107th birthday.
Dorothy Mary Billington - a resident at Tara's Retreat in Sandridge - was born in Liverpool on October 18, 1916, during the First World War.
She spent a lot of her childhood in the Lake District, where her mother was from, hiking and visiting her grandparents.
Dorothy was a member of the Girl Guides, and after leaving school went to clerical college for shorthand typing, so she could fulfil her father's wish for her to work on the railways as a secretary.
She was a member of a walking club for many years, and walked four miles in her late 90s.
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It was at the club that she met her husband Fred, who she married in 1947. Dorothy nursed Fred for five years before he died in 1996.
Dorothy has one daughter, a son-in-law, three grandchildren and several great-grandchildren, and she moved from Liverpool to St Albans at the age of 95 to be closer to her daughter.
Her hobbies included reading, table tennis - for which she won a cup - dress making and knitting, and she still attends the care home's chair exercise class every Friday.
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