TRIBUTES have been paid to Hampshire’s oldest woman who has died aged 108.

Molly Green passed away peacefully on June 2 in her 109th year at her home in Christchurch Road in Winchester.

Her life will be remembered at a special service at the Church of St Cross on July 4 by the family she left behind – her two sons John, 74, Edward, 70, and her daughter and son-in-law with whom she lived, Hermione, 77, and Ben Goulding, 86.

Mrs Goulding said: “Her mother and her grandmother both lived into their nineties but my mother hardly ever ate anything at all.

“Above all she loved chatting and throwing parties. Right up until last month when she’d have people over from one of the nearby care homes for coffee, she was always very social.”

Mrs Green was born on January 15 in 1906 in London, to William and Alice Sommerville, and grew up in Southwark. She met her husband, Captain William Seager Green, when she was 24 and he was 36, at a rugby match in 1928 and they were engaged two days later.

However, Captain Green was stationed at China for two years before the wedding could take place, as it eventually did in 1930. Then a lieutenant, he was a prisoner of war during World War One but continually escaped forcing his German captors to reposition him further and further east.

Eventually, while at a labour camp in Silesia, in Poland, he was released and he helped to liberate the camp and marched to the coast for transport. They arrived in time to be rescued on Christmas Day.

Molly and William moved to Bath when he retired in 1936 after he was made the Deputy Director of Ordinance. She gave birth to Hermione a year later.

“She was quite bright and intelligent, a great raconteur,” Mrs Goulding added. People have written to us talking about how amusing and entertaining she was.

“About four or five years ago she broke her leg and the medics were thrilled to meet someone who could remember the sinking of the Titanic!”

Mrs Green lived through two world wars, a Russian revolution and witnessed Haile Selassie at a special ceremony after he was exiled during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. She was also a red gown at Winchester Cathedral for about 10 years and would welcome people in.

She leaves behind her grandchildren, Nicholas, Giles, Alice, Harriet, Anna, William, Sasha and Toby and 12 great-grandchildren.