Two remarkable women marked milestone years with friends and family – celebrating 100th and 109th birthdays less than a week apart.

Amy Johnson, who is believed to be the oldest person in Cumbria, received her sixth letter from the Queen, marking her 109th birthday.

She has already been sent a birthday card from Her Majesty on her 100th and 105th birthdays – and every year since.

And May Langston, of Morton, Carlisle, joined her as centenarian, when she turned 100.

Great-great grandmother Mrs Johnson, of Shap, had a low key celebration at home with family and people from the village dropping by throughout the day.

Turning yet another year older, she had been looking forward to receiving her usual royal greeting.

Mrs Johnson was born on October 18, 1907, in Westmoreland, Jamaica.

She moved to the UK in 1961, aged 54, to support Doreen Lee – her only child who had moved here six years earlier to train as a district nurse and midwife.

Leaving her life in the Caribbean, she embarked on a new life in a strange country as a grandmother, helping Doreen with her first child Stuart.

Now she has four grandchildren, three great grandchildren and five great-great grandchildren as well as being know as grandma to everyone else in the close-knit village where she and Doreen have lived since 1998.

“It started out as nana and now its grandma. Nana was popular in the sixties,” said Doreen, 86.

She puts her mother’s longevity down to her independent spirit.

Up until the past couple of years, Mrs Johnson had been an active lady.

She has a strong Christian faith and was a regular church-goer and would walk up to St Michael’s Church on a good day.

Now, due to problems with her knees she goes only occasionally.

She taught herself dress making, something she did until about 10 years ago, and was forever making clothes for her growing family.

Mrs Langston has always been a strong-minded woman and lived independently before moving to Holmehurst Residential Care Home, in Goschen Road, off Dalston Road, in Carlisle, in April, near to where she brought up her two children.

“She’s had an amazing life,” said her daughter Jane, 68. “She was a force to be reckoned with. She used to say you’ve to be frightened of nobody. That was her motto.

“She was always very much in control and you had to do it her way.

“Everybody finds her so interesting and she always has tales to tell. I used to say she should write it all down.”

Mrs Langston was born in Ardrossan, Ayrshire, before moving to Carlisle with her family, aged three.

As a youngster she enjoyed ballroom dancing and played the piano. A former pupil at Margaret Sewell School – which merged to form Trinity School – she went on to work in city firm Carrs’ offices as a typist and that’s where she met her future husband Sydney.

Sydney went on to join the Royal Artillery Corps as an officer and the couple moved to Malta after the war.

There they enjoyed an interesting social life, attending luxurious parties and in one case meeting royalty in the form of the Queen, before she took up the throne.

Jane said: “My mother and father were at a dinner onboard ship and Elizabeth and Prince Philip were there. My mother sat next to Philip. She always tells the tale.

“It was 1947, I think, and they ran out of fish. They didn’t have enough to go round and my mother shared with Prince Philip.”

Returning to England she became a medical secretary.

But it wasn’t long before she was jet-setting again and took off to Africa for a year, visiting Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya with Jane, aged 10 at the time. In her last job she worked for the civil service in Carlisle. As union rep she was awarded for her efforts fighting for better rates of pay for typists.

This was when she met the Prime Minister at the time, Harold Wilson.

Despite travelling and living in different parts of the world she always returned to Carlisle, which Jane said she will always call home.

She and Sydney divorced in the sixties and she remained independent since.

Jane wanted to thank the staff at Holmehurst for a lovely party.