FAMILY members have paid tribute to a 'competitive' former wartime evacuee to Whitchurch who died a day before her 100th birthday.

Eileen Grace was a resident in Greenfields Care Home, in Liverpool Road, and she passed way on Wednesday, September 14 aged 99.

Eileen first came to Whitchurch as a wartime evacuee from Liverpool and went onto serve in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) during the Second World War and met her husband, baker and businessman, Frank and they ran Grace's in 42 Watergate Street.

Her daughter Maureen Williams and her granddaughter, Clare Williams spoke fondly about Eileen being competitive, including playing in a table tennis tournament at the age of 84 and said she had a number of different hobbies.

Maureen said: "She was very competitive, on her 84th birthday we were abroad.

"In a table tennis competition, she started and you were eliminated if you lost.

"She beat 15 people to win the cup.

"She was captain of the golf club and she started painting, I have got all her pictures here.

"She started at 85, painting pictures and whatever she did, it was brilliant."

Many people who met Eileen described her as a 'character,' according to her granddaughter, Clare.

Clare added: "She was an absolute one-off, I think everyone who has met her will say that.

"She was a character and definitely sort of family matriarch, I would say.

"She loved her golf, she was lady captain at Hawkstone Park in the early 1980s.

"She also attended the Catholic church, that was the other big thing in her life."

Clare explained how her grandmother had suffered a broken wrist on her right arm, yet taught herself to write using her left hand.

She said: "Back in the 80s, she was in an accident.

"Somebody threw a brick through the window, it was an old Victorian style plate glass.

"It severed her wrist, she had to have surgery.

"It was a terrible accident, that was her right wrist.

"Within a few weeks she taught herself to write with her left hand and you could not tell the difference with her handwriting.

"She was even icing cakes in the bakery.

"She was icing them with her left hand like she had been using that hand all her life

"She was very tenacious, she just got on with it."

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Clare said her grandmother had fought off Covid-19, in spite of her age.

She added: "In recent weeks she survived Covid-19.

"She had been in hospital, she had different infections but she got over them all.

"She was obviously very poorly and very frail, but she fought through everything."