A woman from Kilmington is celebrating her 100th birthday this week.

But finds herself in a peculiar situation. Following the Queen's recent death on Thursday (September 8th), she will be one of the first people to receive a 100-birthday celebratory card from our new Head of State, King Charles III.

Pamela was born on September 16th, 1922 in Misouree, in what was then British India. Although her mother had worked as a Froebel teacher before moving to India, at the age of six, Pamela and her sister were sent to be educated in England as the climate was deemed to be unhealthy for young children.

Pamela returned to Lahore to be with her parents when war broke out in 1939. There she met her future husband, Roland Muirhead, who was serving in the British Army in India and within a few years the couple were engaged and then married on February 12th l945 in Lahore Cathedral.

Pamela travelled the world with her husband and lived in Egypt (around the onset of the Suez Crisis) and Germany where he was stationed. Pamela was very much involved with the Forces' Charity SSAFA.  On Roland's early retirement in 1966,  they decided to settle in a small cottage near Lyme Regis before moving fifteen years ago in 2007 to Kilmington, where Pamela still lives.

Pamela has two children, a boy and a girl, four grandchildren and four great grandchildren, some of whom flew in from Australia specially to celebrate Pamela's birthday. On Friday she enjoyed a birthday meal at River Cottage near Axminster, before a wider celebration tea party with all the family and friends on Saturday at Cranberries.

She loves to read and embroider and has a good set of neighbours and friends around her who always check in to make sure she is well. Kilmington is few places still to arrange a designated Shepherd, whose job it is to visit the elderly and vulnerable in the community. 

Her family told the Herald: “She has a lovely soul. She has an aura about her that attracts people to her. She still lives independently, in her own home, and is very much with it.” 

Pamela Muirhead told the Herald, the secret to a good life includes: “A happy family, whom she loves, around her.”