IN the year she was born, Edward VII was on the throne and Rowntrees relocated to its new factory in Haxby Road.

By the time Edith Penistone took up her first teaching post, the First World War had only recently come and gone and free school meals were available for the first time.

Born in 1906 in Wistow, near Selby, Edith Penistone, nee Storr, saw much in her long life.

She trained as a teacher after leaving school and spent a year teaching at a school in Tosside on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border, before she started work as a class teacher at the old village school in Askham Bryan when she was 23.

Villager Mary Carbert, of Main Street, one of Mrs Penistone’s former pupils, said she had fond memories of her old teacher, who has now died aged 106.

Mrs Carbert said: “She must have been absolutely smashing because all the children liked her – you knew she was there for us and she kept in touch with a lot of her old pupils throughout her long life. She was very proud of her pupils.

“She will also be remembered by her daily journey to teach from Naburn, a bus ride, a ferry across the Ouse and a cycle trip, five miles to Askham Bryan school.

‘‘She was at the school for 17 years and many pupils from the 1940s will remember her with great love.”

After leaving Askham Bryan, she went on to teach in Selby and became a headmistress. She married Alick, a haulage contractor, in 1925 at Wistow church. The couple had one daughter, Joyce, and one granddaughter, Jennifer.

Mrs Penistone went to live with her daughter in Stamford in Lincolnshire after the death of her husband in the late 1970s and accompanied Joyce and her husband Halroy Smith, who was in the RAF, when they moved abroad with his work. She went on to live with them in Germany, Spain, Italy, Holland, Luxembourg and Barbados.

Mr Smith said: “In her spare time, Edith used to read a lot and write a lot, she loved sewing and made a lot of dolls. She enjoyed travelling with us and kept in touch with lots of her old pupils who were dear to her.”

In 2005 Mrs Penistone suffered a fall at home and moved into White Friars residential home in Stamford where she lived until her death.