Posted
2 March 2023
Barnes Lodge Resident, Phyllis Moxon, Turns 103!
Born right at the beginning of the roaring twenties, Barnes Lodge resident, Phyllis Moxon, celebrated her 103rd birthday yesterday at the Tonbridge care home.
Phyllis was born on 1st March 1920, when the nation was still recovering from WW1 and the global Spanish flu pandemic, she grew up in Hadlow alongside her seven brothers and two sisters.
Phyllis met her husband Arthur when the pair were youngsters at school, she recalls how he used to do a bakers round after school. But as the sweethearts entered their teenage years, WW2 was looming and in 1939, Arthur joined the RAF.
The pair were engaged in June 1940 and married in January 1945 in Hadlow. After the war, Arthur got a job as a control chemist in Tonbridge and their life as a family started when their first son Roy was born in 1946, followed by the arrival of Malcolm in 1949. A year later in 1950, the family moved to Barry in Wales for Arthur’s job but sadly a just a few years later, Arthur passed away following an illness.
As her boys grew up, Phyllis worked various jobs, including one at The Hop Farm in Paddock Wood, where her youngest son, Malcolm, would help her pick hops.
Today, Phyllis has four grandchildren and eight great grandchildren, many of whom joined her for her birthday celebrations yesterday. She resides at Barnes Lodge Care Home in Tonbridge, (though she lived independently in her own home until she was 102!) where she spends her days with her best friend and fellow resident, Margaret.
Senior Carer at the home, Emmie, describes Phyllis as “the sweetest thing” she says, “She’s always dressed immaculately, has a great sense of humour and she likes a lie in! When I go into her in the mornings, she always says, ‘Can I have five more minutes?’ She really is amazing.”
When asked what the secret to a long life is, Phyllis says, “Oh I don’t know, to take life as it comes, I suppose!”
