The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Vivacious Holbeach resident Hilda Millett was one of the oldest people in the country to vote in this year’s General Election.
She turned 107 on Monday and is the 154th oldest person in Great Britain.
Photos of Harry and Hilda which sit in her room at Mayfield Residential Home in Holbeach.
There have been five monarchs and 19 Prime Ministers in her lifetime, and she has always voted Conservative.
In fact it was at a dance for young Tory supporters that Hilda met her future husband, Harry.
That was in Cross Gates, Leeds, where she grew up and was married in 1937.
The eldest of four children, Hilda left school at 14 and helped her mother to look after siblings Joe, Jack and Emily.
“But I didn’t want to stay at home for long,” she said. “I got a job in a local shop learning to make ladies’ hats.”
By the time she was 16, Hilda was working as a sales assistant at department store and India rubber manufacturers Thornton and Co Ltd in Leeds.
“It had three big staircases,” she said. “One day I was running down them to look at the price of something in the window for a customer when I tripped and fell into the arms of Mr Thornton himself!
“I shall always remember him saying to me ‘Take your time, young lady, take your time’.
“I don’t know what might have happened to me if he hadn’t been there!”
Hilda and Harry with grandchild Victoria.
Hilda obviously made an impression on the boss as later she became the first staff member to receive a wedding present from the company – a burr walnut desk.
By the day of the ceremony – September 18, 1937 – she had given up her employment.
“It was felt then that if you still had to go to work, you hadn’t married very well!” said Hilda.
Her father – an accountant by trade – served in the Boer War as a mounted policeman, but her husband – who gained a PhD in engineering – avoided having to leave the country during the two world wars.
But as Harry’s career progressed, including being a chemical works manager in Flixborough, the Milletts enjoyed the trappings of business travel abroad.
This photo montage includes Hilda, son Christopher and young members of the family playing in the garden at Hilda and Harry’s Long Sutton home.
Their son Christopher, a civil engineer, went on to give them two grandchildren, who in turn bore Harry and Hilda three great-grandchildren.
“When Harry retired, he said to me ‘what would you like to do?’” recalled Hilda. “He said ‘should we buy a pub?’”
She was rather relieved when that notion faded away and instead they moved into a newly-built bungalow in Long Sutton.
When she was 100, widower Hilda was asked to cut the ribbon to open a chemist shop in the town.
She was still very independent and only moved to Mayfield Residential Home in Fleet Street at the age of 104.
Last month local MP John Hayes paid a second annual visit to Hilda, who said: “I like him – he’s a gentleman.”
Hilda used her postal vote to back the Conservative in this month’s election and was delighted to see him returned to the House of Commons.
Meanwhile, Mr Hayes was so enchanted by evergreen Hilda that he asked if she could be his grandmother!
