IT WAS meant to be an intimate tea party but in the end nearly 100 people turned up from across the world to celebrate Catherine “Kitt” Evans’s 100th birthday.

Family members had come from as far afield as the US and China for the party at the Witney Lakes resort.

Mrs Evans, who lives in Marston, Oxford, and whose birthday was on Friday, said: “It is a wonderful party.

“It feels amazing to have so many people come and see me.

“I thank my mother for giving us good advice to always care for someone and be nice to each other, and we have lived up to it.”

Mrs Evans moved to Oxford in the 1930s when her husband Jack, who she married at the age of 19, got a job at Pressed Steel.

During the Second World War she worked at the munitions factory in Cowley and after that took a job as an upholstery inspector at the Morris Motors factory in Oxford.

Until the age of 80 she opened up her home in Marston Road as a bed and breakfast for the families of those who were having heart surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Headington .

Some of those grateful guests even came to her birthday party to help celebrate.

Relatives of all ages also joined to Mrs Evans’s party, which featured a large cake.

Speaking at Sunday’s party, family member Michael Moate said: “It started off as a tea party for less than 50 people but so many people wanted to come.”

Mrs Evans, who has five grandchildren and five great- grandchildren, was born in Caerphilly in South Wales in 1912 and was one of eight children.

Four of her siblings are still alive but her only child, Jean, died last year at the age of 81.

Her husband died 40 years ago.