The mayor of Penryn visited a centenarian last week in a house that was built by her husband and his father nearly half a century ago.

Ivy Doreen Thomas, nee Symonds, turned 100 on Wednesday, and was visited by former mayor Lorna Smuda and current mayor and mayoress Mark and Diane Snowdon as her family held an open house.

Doreen, who has lived in the Penryn area all her life, left school at 14 and went into service for a doctor on The Square. During the war, she was a Land Girl, working at various farms around Mawnan Smith, and then had various jobs including at a fishing reel factory at Bickland, and at Penryn Model Laundry at Glasney and Greenbank Laundry, where her family said her ironing skills were second to none.

She later worked retail including at Dingles, where she worked until her early seventies as no-one realised her age and thought she was ten years younger.

She married Joseph Thomas at St. Gluvias Church in May 1938, when he was 28 and she was 21, and the couple enjoyed 58 years together.

In 1967 Joseph, who worked for Kernick Builders along with the mayor's father Joe Snowdon, built the house that Doreen lives in today with her son and his fiancée.

Doreen was a very keen gardener and would spend all day tending her plants, well into her nineties, until several years ago when dementia meant she was unable to continue.

Doreen and Joseph had two sons, Clive who is currently her carer along with his partner Patricia Brenchley, and Robert, along with two granddaughters and two grandsons and seven great-grandchildren.

Her parents, Ivy and Percy Symonds, lived in Constantine and Herniss and had five girls - Olga, Doreen, Iris, Sylvia and Blanche. Ivy's mother lived in a house at the bottom of Hillhead, demolished when Glasney Terrace was created, where Doreen used to spend every weekend, often with her elder sister Olga.

Doreen was joined on her birthday by both her sons and their partners, along with other extended family members, and neighbours.

As well as these visitors and a bouquet from the mayor, she received cards from the Queen and a telegram from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.