A FARMER from West Oxfordshire celebrated his 100th birthday with his family at a care home in Oxford.
Frederick Clapton, known as Charles, had a tea party to commemorate his birthday last Saturday at Sanctuary Care’s Iffley Residential and Nursing Home.
The youngest of four, Mr Clapton went to Alvescot Primary School and Witney Grammar School before working on his parents’ farm, Field Farm in Alvescot.
He said: “I am very lucky to have lived and worked in the countryside and have been so close to nature.
“I absolutely love horses and it was a pleasure working with them on the farm.
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“But farming was a hard life and a demanding career. I was pleased to be able to retire early at 55.”
In 1944 Mr Clapton married Kathleen Sanders at St Mary’s Church, in Witney, after meeting her at The Fleece pub.
After retiring the couple moved to Ducklington, but Mrs Clapton died from a stroke in 1988.
After becoming a father to David and Sally and grandfather to four and great-grandfather to five, Mr Clapton rekindled a romance with old girlfriend Jane Handy and remarried at the age of 75.
The couple had courted in their 20s but lost contact when Mr Clapton met his first wife.
Mr Clapton and Jane restarted their relationship 45 years later when they met for afternoon tea at Oxford’s Randolph Hotel.
They married at Abingdon Registe Office and lived in Iffley for 23 years.
He moved into the Anne Greenwood Close care home when he was 98 after Jane died in 2012 aged 93.
Mr Clapton enjoying a day out at the seaside in the 50s or 60s
Asked the secret to his long life Mr Clapton said: “Not having done anything foolish.
“That, combined with good health, eating good-quality, farm-produced food all my life, drinking very little alcohol and absolutely no smoking.”
One of the home’s first residents, he helped create the mosaic which marked the home’s opening last year, working with a local poet and artist and pupils from nearby schools.
The home’s activities leader Mandy Bloomfield said: “Charles is a lovely, gentle-mannered man who still takes a keen interest in all that’s going on in the world.
“We are delighted to have celebrated such a special birthday with him.”
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