Milestone birthday for Ruth Hallowell who was part of George Hallowell Coachworks in Morpeth and won awards for her baking

Born in County Durham in 1923, she was a Red Cross nurse during the Second World War based at Rothbury.

She met Morpeth businessman George Hallowell at a war-time dance in Ashington and they married in December 1945.

Ruth worked alongside George at George Hallowell Coachworks in Wellway as a young married woman – often donning overalls and working overnight with her husband in order to finish rush jobs.

The couple lived in Auburn Place for the first 17 years of their marriage then moved to Cottingwood Lane, very convenient for the grammar schools when their children (John and Judith) were teenagers and for the coachbuilding business.

In the early 1980s they moved to Longhirst. George died in 1994 and Ruth has lived at Foxton Court since September 2020. She has four grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

Judith, now Judith Thompson, said: “My mother was an excellent dressmaker, cook and cake decorator, and her baking was legendary.

“She won prizes for almost every (if not every) class of baking at the Longhirst Show – fruit, cheese and plain scones, Victoria sponge, fruit cake, gingerbread, malt loaf, bread, biscuits and jam.

“Our paternal grandfather (born in the 1870s) ran the coachbuilding business until our father, an only child, took it over.

“Our father had a large number of local and not so local customers and I believe he was the first to build a three-storey livestock container with a hydraulic operated ramp.”