GREAT-grandmother and a sister to seven siblings, Rose Paton, has died at the age of 102.

Rose was born in Fulham in London and was the second of eight children and the first of four daughters born just before the First World War.

She would go and collect ice before school each day for her mother to be able to make and sell ice cream and, after finishing education, she took on a job as an apprentice to an upholsterer and curtain maker in Chelsea.

After a year, she changed work to be employed at a receiving office, where she stayed for six years. Rose got married at the age of 20 to husband, Bert, 21, who worked as a carpenter, which she often told people was the best thing that she ever did. Together the couple welcomed three children including Pamela, John and Keith.

Rose and the first two children lived in West London during the Second World War during the air raids and bombing before the family moved to South Wales. Bert worked as qualified engineer building air fields in Wales and East Anglia before going on to help with the construction of a Mulberry Harbour for the D-Day invasion.

Following the birth of their third child, Keith, the family moved to Woodford Bridge in Essex where Rose's husband, Bert, became director of a city of London building company. The couple saved and bought a piece of land in Beckenham in Kent, where they built a new family home, where Rose took pleasure in creating a garden for the children to enjoy and later they retired to Bearsted in Kent.

Bert and Rose moved down to Ferndown to be close to her family in the early 1990s before Bert died in 1994.

As well as gardening, Rose also enjoyed visiting her grandchildren and great grandchildren in Canada after her daughter, Pam, moved there in 1961.

Rose lived on her own until the age of 101 and spent the last 18-months of her life living at Brook View Nursing Home in West Moors.

She died on June 11 and is survived by her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren as well as her youngest sister, Violet.

Her funeral will take place on Monday, June 27 at 1pm with donations going to the RNLI.