MOLLIE FLETCHER, who helped shape a new future for West Challow with her husband, has died 105.

Born in Brighton on August 26, 1909, Mollie Ratcliffe’s family moved to Chilton, Oxfordshire, when she was a young girl.

There, her father Richard worked in stables caring for wounded horses both during and after the First World War.

He was also an artist and funded himself through a course at the Royal College of Art.

Mollie Ratcliffe became an apprentice milliner – hat-maker – in Birmingham in the 1930s, where she met William Fletcher.

The couple were both keen motorcyclists and she would frequently ride one to travel between her home in Chilton and Birmingham.

She was spotted one day by her brother Ronnie Ratcliffe going across the cross roads at Rowstock without stopping.

She later confessed to him she had found it difficult to stop and so “hoped for the best”.

He was so appalled that he lent her £25, so she could find a job closer to home that didn’t require her to take such a dangerous commuting method.

She later used it to rent a shop at 22 Wallingford Street in Wantage.

Miss Ratcliffe married Mr Fletcher on April 21, Easter Day, 1935 in Chilton’s parish church.

Together they bought a line of derelict cottages near the original shop in Wallingford Street in 1937, demolished them, and built their own shop with a flat above.

This was opposite a large haberdashers called Badgers, where Waitrose now stands.

They called the shop ‘Mollie’ and sold fashion clothing for ladies until the late 1950s. In 1943 the couple moved to West Challow, where they bought and renovated a house now known as Challow Mead in Silver Lane.

West Challow at the time had more condemned houses than habitable ones – 18 of the 32 houses were condemned as ‘category five’, not worth renovating. Together they established a parish council and set about helping the village back on its feet, by building more homes and bringing in proper drainage.

Mr Fletcher was chairman of the parish council and also a rural district councillor.

They also helped raise money for a village hall and set up a youth club.

In the 1960s they moved to Devon, but the couple always considered their time in West Challow the “golden days”, their family said.

Mr Fletcher asked to be buried there and Mrs Fletcher is also due to be buried beside him.

Their son Dick said: “They were very fond of West Challow and its community, and considered it a high point in their lives.

“Although they left later on, they always thought of it as being from the golden days.”

In Devon Mrs Fletcher helped set up the Seaton and District Art Society and became a keen painter.

Mollie Fletcher died on February 26 in a care home in Woodbridge, Suffolk, where she had lived near her son Edward for the past six months.

She is survived by two sons, Edward, 71, and Dick, 75, as well as five grandchildren. Her husband died in 1998.

A funeral will take place at 2pm on Monday at St Lawrence’s Church, in West Challow.