TO MARK her 100th birthday today, Rena Gill will celebrate her Welsh heritage with an intimate performance from a male voice choir.

The great-grandmother of three was born in North Wales, but moved to Marcham in the 1980s to be near her son and his family in Oxford.

She liked her new village so much she wrote a poem in tribute to it and it was hung on the wall at her sheltered accommodation.

Mrs Gill, who now lives at Old Station House in Abingdon, said she has been increasingly interested in her upcoming centenary.

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Her son, Robin Gill, a retired geology professor who lives in Headington, joked: “If there is a doctor visiting she never fails to mention it.”

Born in Conway, at three she survived the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic which killed 50 million people. Her father died when she was 15, and four years later she moved to London to take a job with the National Provincial Bank.

Her mother followed her to London where they took a house in Muswell Hill and joined Muswell Hill Methodist Church.

There she met Stanley Cooper Gill and married him in June 1939 after an 18-month engagement.

When the Second World War broke out Mr Gill became a conscientious objector and helped the London emergency services.

Oxford Mail:

  • Rena with her late husband Stanley                            

Robin, the couple’s only son, was born in 1944, and was briefly evacuated with Rena to North Wales.

Back in London, the Gills put down a deposit on their first house near Alexandra Palace, and Mrs Gill helped establish a young wives’ club at their church.

She also joined an all-female theatrical troupe, sometimes donning a moustache for male roles.

Mr Gill had an operation in 1955 for a blood clot in his brain, but never fully recovered. He died in hospital in 1967, the year Robin married. Mr Gill said his mother handled the situation “remarkably”, continuing all her activities with the church, which was a “major support”.

She became close to her new daughter-in-law’s parents, and visited them often in Somerset.

In 1976, the younger Gill couple bought a house in Headington where they still live today, and in 1988 Mrs Gill moved to Sweet Briar in Marcham.

She joined Trinity Church, Abingdon, and the Women’s Institute and made new friends.

She moved to Old Station House in 2007 after her eyesight began to fail.

Today she will have a small party with her close family accompanied by tea, cake and a short performance from a Wantage-based male voice choir.

MARCHAM BY RENA GILL

I have come to live
Under these wide skies
Corn field-patterned earth
Where high the crow flies

I have come to live
Where I hear the doves call
And flowers push their way
Through the hard stone wall
I have come to live
Where winds sing in trees
I have made my home
Among such things as these

I’ve come to live
Quiet when I’m old
The song almost ended
The tale almost told

 

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