A MIDDLEWICH resident who remembers looking at searchlights in the sky during the Great War celebrated her 106th birthday on Wednesday.

Ethel Hickson was born on the day of a total eclipse on Thursday, October 10, 1912, two years before the Great War had even started.

Her parents were Lucy and Arnold Clarke and growing up in Middlewich, Ethel had a happy childhood. She lived in a rural community and remembers walking along a cart track on the edge of fields, near where she now lives.

Ethel told the Guardian: “The doctors keep on asking me what my secret is and I have not got one, I just keep on going.

“I used to be able to walk through Middlewich and see someone I knew. It’s not quite like that any more.

I wish people would smile more. It always used to be a very friendly place. We just grew up and had fun in the streets playing hopscotch. Life was happy and we never had many possessions.

“One of my earliest memories was visiting relatives in Leeds and lying down to watch the searchlights in the night sky.”

For her birthday Ethel enjoyed a special service at Middlewich Methodist Church in Booth Lane.

Ethel said: “They let me choose my favourite hymns and I think everyone was happy because I chose the good, old-fashioned ones everyone knows the words to.”

Leaving school at the age of 14, Ethel became an apprentice at the Lily Works factory which is now the site of Newton Court Nursing Home. At the outbreak of the Second World War, aged 26, Ethel went to work at Rolls Royce which was making Spitfire engines to help with the war effort. She later moved to the Silk Works and Powell’s Factory.

A lifelong committed Methodist, Ethel married Richard Alvin Hickson, known as Alvin, and the couple had 34 happy years together.

After Alvin’s death in 1982 she was invited by her cousin Gerry for a holiday in America to give her something to look forward to.

Ethel travelled by plane for the first time in 1983 at the age of 71 and over the years she has visited, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Austria and Israel. She spent one birthday in Australia and 16 birthdays travelling across America visiting family. One of Ethel’s only regrets is that she never got to see Africa.

Ethel may have given up globetrotting but with the help of good friends, Pam Maddock and Andrew Barker, she still lives in her own home and has a busy life, attending chapel coffee mornings and Scrabble afternoons.

She does her own supermarket shopping, cooking, washing and some gardening, though she says she wishes she could be more independent.