It may well be Christmas time, but it's a quite incredible birthday making headlines in Dartford this festive season.

Only a few hundred people in the UK reach the grand old age of 104 every year – and Elsie Garlinge from Dartford is now one of them.

Elsie, born and bred in Gravesend before making the move to Dartford, has just celebrated her 104th birthday with friends and family.

Although she lives with eldest son John in Trevithick Drive, Dartford, Elsie popped by youngest son Jim’s house in Wrotham to mark the occasion.

Four of her seven great grandchildren – Adelaide Pierce, 14, Giada Grandi-Sims, 10, and twins Pierce and Marcus Sinden, 11 – were in attendance, along with grandchildren Caroline Lynch, Lia Grandi-Sims and Claire Sinden.

Much of Elsie’s other family is now based in the American state of Connecticut; daughter Jill is there along with granddaughter Elaine Ciarcia and great grandchildren Elese, 16, Eliza, 13, and Marcus, eight.

It is certainly a huge family, one which started when Elsie married late husband Fred in 1935, and testament to the long and happy life she has lived.

“She can probably remember the end of the First World War, lived through the depression of the 1930s and the Second World War of the 40s,” says son Jim.

“The age of austerity in the 50s, the swinging 60s, the 70s, 80s, 90s, noughts and now into the tens... a lot has changed in the 100 years she’s been alive.”

While such a grand age inevitably means the loss of friends and a somewhat less active body, Jim says his mother has remained her cheerful and kind-hearted self throughout.

“She is a very kind woman and she’s retained her cheerfulness all these years,” he says.

“She is obviously not as mobile as she used to be and has one or two health problems, but she has always been cheerful and nothing has ever really got her down.”

Jim says Elsie retains a very active mind and thoroughly enjoyed the company of her family and friends at her party.