Birthday girl celebrates 90 years in same house

A woman who has lived in the same house her whole life has celebrated her 90th birthday.

Vera McClare was born in Kimberworth Hospital in 1922, before going to the house in Clough Street, Masbrough, home to her mother and father and where her grandparents lived before her.

And later all Vera’s three daughters, Lindsey (63), Teresa (62), and Pat (57), were born in the front room of the house.

The house had originally been home to her grandfather and grandmother, Herbert and Eliza Lounds, from 1912 when they were the first tenants after it was built.

They were followed by her parents, Edith and Sidney Swaine, who moved in to look after the couple when they got older.

Vera, youngest of three children alongside brother Reg and sister Irene, married taxi driver Bill McClare in 1948 and looked after her parents at the house after her father was seriously injured in a works accident.

Vera, who ran a hairdressing shop from the house in her younger days, also worked as a miller in munitions during the Second World War.

After the war she went back into hairdressing, using the front room of the property as a salon until the mid-60s.

Vera celebrated her birthday with a family meal her daughters on the day, followed by a party for family and friends at the Carlton Park Hotel a few days later.