Bournemouth resident Dorothy celebrates her 100th birthday (From Bournemouth Echo)

Bournemouth resident Dorothy celebrates her 100th birthday

4:00pm Saturday 2nd February 2013 in News By Joanna Codd

WHEN Dorothy Rule and her daughters decided to leave London in the 1960s, they chose their destination by sticking a pin in the map.

The move to Bournemouth clearly agreed with Dorothy, who celebrated her 100th birthday at a party with her family and friends.

Mrs Rule was born in Fulham and had an older brother. Their father managed to survive military service in World War One.

Dorothy married in her early twenties and went on to have her daughters, Margot and Pam.

Margot said: “We moved from London in 1965. We’d all decided we needed and wanted a change.

“We put a pin in the map and came down here. We had no money. We had never been to Bournemouth – we didn’t know what was outside London – but my sister said she wanted to live by the sea.

“Mum and Pam came down in the removal van and I caught a train down after work. It was a very happy move. We never regretted it at all.”

Dorothy worked in the Berketex shop inside Plummers department store in Boscombe until she retired at the age of 60. She has lived in Ensbury Park for the last 40 years and shares a home with Pam, who is her official carer.

Margot, who married and had two children of her own, lives in Devon, and Dorothy is a great-grandmother four times over.

“She worked hard all her life but has always been very healthy, although she can’t see,” said Margot. “I’m very proud of her and very grateful to my sister for having done so much for her all these years.

“This is a huge milestone.”