A WOMAN who spent her early years in Stoke Bliss has died aged 86.

Hilda Lottie Court will be better remembered as Hilda Walker, who lived in the area during her teenage years before moving to Studley, Warwickshire.

She weighed only 2lb at birth, an exceptionally low weight for the 1920s, and had not been expected to survive.

But Hilda, who was the youngest of six children, confounded the experts and lived to a healthy old age. She had six children herself, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. During the war, Hilda worked in a munitions factory in Redditch. She married in 1944 and is survived by her husband.