RETIRED cobbler Tom Hammond has celebrated his 100th birthday.

The lifelong reader of The Northern Echo lived in the same house in Kirbymoorside, North Yorkshire, for 90 years and now lives in a Scarborough nursing home.

He ran a shoe repair business in Kirkbymoorside for many years but had to give it up during the Second World War because he was unable to obtain leather.

He then worked at Wombleton Aerodrome and for an agricultural engineering firm in Kirkbymoorside.

However, his skills as a shoe- maker were called on again when he was asked to make specialist boots for disabled people at the Adela Shaw Orthopaedic Hospital, in Kirkbymoorside, where he worked until his retirement.

For more than 50 years he was captain of the bell ringers at All Saints Parish Church.

Mr Hammond has a reputation at the Dulverton Hall nursing home, Scarborough, as a joke-teller and singer