She has lived through two world wars, seen the invention of television and cinema and watched as sweeping changes have transformed the world.

Today Nancy Corri celebrates her 108th birthday, and she puts her long life down to hard work and the good old “Smethwick air.” Nancy was born and raised in the Black Country town and she lived on her own in Windmill Lane until last year.

She is the oldest woman in the Black Country – followed by Louisa Watts,  aged 107, from Wolverhampton.

She is now at the Dingle Meadow Nursing Home in Golden Crest Drive, Oldbury, where she is the toast of other residents and staff. A singer was due at the home today to perform her favourite Elvis Presley songs and she was  promised her favourite drink, a bitter lemon, to mark the occasion.

She said: “You were allowed to leave school at 13 and start work, I didn’t have a certificate of my age because my mother died when I was two so I had to go and get a new one.

“But instead of writing 1902 they wrote 1901, so I left a year early and started work.

“Hard work and Smethwick air, that’s my secret.  I have worked my whole life and I never had a sit down job.”

Nancy worked in a factory in the Jewellery Quarter before moving on to W & T Avery Ltd at Soho Foundry in Smethwick.

There she worked on the factory floor for 37 years.

She married husband Ernest at the age of 52 and since his death in 1974 she had lived alone.

Her niece, Shirley Aston, aged 74, of Hagley Road, Oldbury, said: “She was doing very well on her own, she could still get around and make herself a cup of tea. But she had a fall last year and she chose to come here.

“She has always lived in Smethwick but she had to cross the border over to Oldbury.

“She is just lovely, you would never guess she is 108.”