One of Britain’s earliest Windrush generation immigrants - who arrived more than 70 years ago - has celebrated her 100th birthday.
Gwendolyn Carey-Fisher had some 100 visitors — one for every year — dropping in during the day for tea at her home at Bush Hill Road in Enfield on January 31, when she cut her cake and showed everyone the birthday card from the King and Queen.
“I just love to be around people,” she said.
She was a leading member of Tottenham Community Church, raising money into her 90s.
Pastor Mikel Maskel presented her with a plaque from the church in Seven Sisters for her long service as a leading member of its committee and women’s society.
Her work included many fund-raising events, even selling vegetables from her garden in Enfield and making Jamaican patties and fruit cakes.
“Mum made exquisitely-decorated cakes,” her daughter Frederica Hunter recalls. “It all began as a hobby but became so popular that she went on make them regularly.”
Gwen arrived in London in 1952 when she was 28 after a three-week journey across the Atlantic from St James, Jamaica.
But it took her just 24 hours to get a job as a machinist repairing uniforms for military personnel. She went on to work as a hand-finisher in the West End for men’s tailored jackets, then changed careers and trained as a nursing assistant in a care home for Islington Council.
Gwendolyn and her husband Winston saved enough in two years to buy a house in Islington, then moved to Crouch End in 1960.
They offered temporary accommodation to others from the Caribbean until they could get homes of their own, as well as raising a family of seven children. She also has 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Gwen loved travelling and has met many famous people, including Nelson and Winnie Mandela in South Africa and Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister.
Her love of politics runs in the family. Her late brother Maxwell Carey was an MP in the Jamaican Parliament in the 1950s and his photograph meeting Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip when they visited Jamaica takes pride of place in Gwen’s living room.
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