Celebrating a century at West Midlands care homeThis week at Roxburgh House in Cradley Heath, which provides residential and dementia care, one Resident has been celebrating her 100th birthday.

On the 2nd of March Winifred Thomas, a Resident at Roxburgh care home celebrated turning 100! Winnie enjoyed celebrations around the home which were arrange by a combined effort from Relatives, Residents and Colleagues. The home was decorated with some wonderful banners which were donated by a local company ‘Sign Wizard’, balloons and some hand made bunting. 

Winne is local to Cradley Heath and grew up in the rural town of Quarry Bank. She has had a colourful working career once leaving school, she worked as a machinist in a bucket factory, and continued doing metal machine work during the war, showing the men what to do! After the war, Winnie began running two pubs, one being in Pensnett, also helped the local children and church by teaching at a Sunday school on the weekends. Winnie has always been very hands on and loved anything she could get stuck into such as knitting, sewing, crochet and really enjoys gardening. Going to church was a regular occurrence as Winnie very much enjoyed singing I the choir. 

Winnies Relatives brought a beautiful cake in for her and also two baskets of cupcakes for everybody to enjoy and the home provided fish and chips for all Residents at lunch. Cradley Heath’s Tesco also donated vouchers to the home so they could buy Winnie and the other Residents some treats for the party. The birthday celebrations were in full swing towards the end of the afternoon with Roxburgh welcoming their first inside entertainer in two years, which was well received by everybody in attendance. Roxburgh’s chef also provided a lovely cocktail party service for Winnie and the Residents later in the day, with a nice range of party foods on offer.
When talking about what Winnie’s secret to long life is, she explained there is actually no secret. She explained that she has always been happy, spent a lot of time in the garden and always loved going to church. But possibly the biggest factor in Winnies long life was making sure she was always first on the dance floor! 

Residents at Roxburgh cannot believe that she is 100, with one Resident saying “Wow doesn’t Winnie look great for her age! No way is she 100”. Other Residents said they really enjoyed the whole day and Winne said she loved receiving the card from the queen.

Linda Wilkes, the Home Manager went on to say, “What a wonderful day for Winnie, it was lovely to see everyone enjoying themselves”. 

Everybody at HC-One would like to wish Winnie a very Happy Birthday!