Bognor Regis former teacher reaches a century

Eileen Stanley enjoyed a get-together with her fellow residents at the Royal Garden Hotel in Aldwick to mark her special occasion.

She followed this with a family party with her daughter and son-in-law, Barbara and Alan Doors, on the Aldwick Bay estate and her three grandsons and two great-grandchildren. One of her two younger sisters, 84, was also there.

Mrs Stanley said last Thursday’s milestone, however, was much like any other day. “I feel the same today as I did yesterday, that’s all I can say about being 100. I’m very happy here and I hope I go on feeling happy,” she said.

Mrs Stanley was a familiar figure in classrooms around Bognor during four decades before, during and after the second world war.

She was born in Portsmouth as the eldest of four children. Her first teaching post was at Nyewood C of E Primary School in 1932. It was there she met her future husband, John Stanley, who was teaching there; they married four years later, but Eileen had to quit because married women were not allowed to continue as teachers.

The outbreak of the war in 1939 gave her the chance to go back to the blackboard to replace the men who had been called up for the armed forces. She taught at schools such as the now-closed Sefter Road in Pagham, Mundham, Walberton and Lyon Street in Bognor.

Peacetime saw Mrs Stanley return to full-time teaching at Oving C of E Primary School until it closed in the 1960s. She then moved to Bognor’s Edward Bryant Primary School where she stayed until her retirement in the early 1970s.