PEOPLE aren’t buying homes as young as they used to – but few expect to wait nearly a century before becoming a first time buyer.

Geoffrey Green spent the vast majority of his life working as a tenant farmer on land owned by the Blenheim Estate - following two generations of farmers on the land dating back to the 19th century.

The 99-year-old great grandfather decided it was time to depart the farmhouse and buy his own property: one of the suites at the new Richmond Witney retirement village.

He said: “My father was a farmer, my grandfather was a farmer - it goes back to 1878.

“I’ve had a wonderful life and I worked hard. My father said to me: ‘Do everything a man can but do it better’ - and I worked damn hard.”

Mr Green was born at Manor Farm, in Combe, at the end of the First World War in 1918, and spared no time in entering the family business as a young man.

He met his late wife Eileen at a Young Farmers’ dance and they married when he was 24. They lived together at Akeman Street Farm.

In his early years farming the land owned by the Estate, Mr Green looked after pigs, sheep, cattle - all of which he said have gone now. He also grew a variety of crops, and said that seeing them grow was one of the most satisfying parts of the work.

He said: “There is a satisfaction about seeing the crops grow and then harvesting them.

“But farming has changed a lot over the years - with the big difference being mechanisation. Horses used to provide the power - now it’s horsepower.

“Nowadays tractors all have satellite navigation and screens and I wouldn’t be allowed to drive any of them.”

The job, however, wasn’t without its perks, and Mr Green met some famous faces over the years, even dining with Harold Macmillan while he held the post of Prime Minister.

And though he has left farming behind - retiring after passing 80 - he is pleased that the profession has been taken up by his son and grandson, who are tenant farmers on land owned by Blenheim.

But for Mr Green himself, who puts his longevity down to ‘abstinence from vices’, it was time to settle down and, last November, he purchased his village suite with assisted living at the Richmond Witney retirement village.

After his wife passed away nearly 20 years ago, Mr Green had been looking after himself, and grew tired of being ‘chief cook and bottle washer’ - but did add: ‘They say farmers never retire’.

He said: “I had never bought a house before because I’d always lived on the farm in houses on the Blenheim Estate.

“I like it very much here but I do sometimes go back to the Manor Farm.”