LUDLOW’S St Laurence Church is expected to be packed as many generations of people from the town pay tribute to the life of Marjorie Waite who died at the age of 101.

The former teacher lived for more than 90 years in the house next to where she was born and even with her age in three figures she was rarely in bed after seven o’clock in the morning.

It is expected that the town may well come to a standstill for a memorial service at St Laurence Church on Saturday, January 30 at noon.

Marjorie Wait celebrated her 100th birthday on October 1, 2014.

She lived in the same house in Castle View Terrace for more than 90 years although she did move once in her lifetime from the house next door where she was born just a couple of months after the guns started firing in the First World War.

Marjorie Waite was born a month premature and her christening was brought forward so her father could be present before being sent to fight in the First World War. It was five years later in 1919 that she saw him again.

Her early school years were spent at the now closed East Hamlet School and after that it was a scholarship to Ludlow Girl’s School on the site of what is now Ludlow College.

“I remember the school and that it dropped Latin in the fourth year,” she told the Advertiser in a piece marking her 100th birthday.

“That put an end to my hopes of being a doctor because at that time you could not go into medicine without Latin. I was advised to consider teaching as an alternative.”

After working for a number of years at schools in the area and also in Burford which at the time was connected to Tenbury School she trained as a teacher in Cheltenham.

It was in 1944 that Marjorie became deputy head at Ludlow School, which at the time was on the site of what is now the Ludlow Conference Centre before it moved to Bromfield Road in the early 1960s.

During 31 years she helped to teach thousands of young people in Ludlow and was meeting many of them around town up to the time of her death.

In 1975 Marjorie retired from teaching to look after her mother who despite a period of ill health went on to live to be 98.

After that a beloved golden Labrador called Cindy was her companion for 16 years.

One of her specialist teaching subjects was PE and she believed that the long term benefits of keeping fit are very real.

But Marjorie largely attributed her long life to being fortunate with her genes and pointed to her mother’s long life.

Until near the end of her life she played scrabble regularly and was a member of many groups in the town and attended Church.

In the summer of 2014 Marjorie received a civic award from Ludlow Town Council.