Addingham'S Alice Dixon can claim to be the oldest churchgoer in the Bradford Diocese at the age of 101.

Now a resident of Homecroft Residential Home, Ilkley, she regularly attended church for 95 years until a leg injury forced her to give up.

Now she still takes Holy Communion, assisted by the vicar of St Margaret's Church, Ilkley, the Rev Richard Hoyal, who visits her at the home.

Mrs Dixon recalled: "Mama used to say to us 'Promise me three things: always go to church, never go in a public house and never swear'."

She began her churchgoing at a very early age when her family had to leave Steeton to live with her grandmother in Carleton following the death of her father.

"We all attended St Mary's Church there - the services were the Book of Common Prayer, which I have been using throughout my life," she said. "We went to 8am Communion, Sunday School, morning service and then Sunday School again in the afternoon."

Mrs Dixon ran a baker's and confectioner's shop in Addingham for 17 years during the 1930s and 40s. She learned the trade after helping at a Skipton bakery where her aunt used to buy her bread.

Mrs Dixon was on the parochial church council at St Peter's Church in Addingham for 29 years and also served as a Sunday School teacher for some 27 years.

"It was always a good, strong church - if we got a bit tight someone always found the money," she said.

Mrs Dixon recently changed to Bolton Priory after she visited it with friends.

She recently met the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, who told her he had never heard of anyone who had been going to church for nearly a century.

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