Florence Fosbrook

WHEN Florence Fosbrook was a young woman, growing up in Kentish Town in the 1930s, the local barrow boys would greet her with cries of “Hello, Lylie!”

This was one of the many nicknames that Ms Fosbrook – also known to friends and family as “Flo,” “Nan” and, later, “Nanny Blue Hair” – would have throughout her long life. Despite the nickname, Ms Fosbrook never had blue hair.

She was given the sobriquet by a great grandchild who, as a toddler, described her hair as being so white it bordered on blue. Ms Fosbrook, who has died aged 102, was born in Rochester Square on Christmas Day in 1920.

She spent her youth helping her mother on the family salad stall outside the old Castle Pub in Kentish Town. She had a lifelong love of horses born of her father’s job as a master greengrocer, responsible for supplying horses and carts to the local barrow boys.

Ms Fosbrook lived her whole life in and around Kentish Town, surrounded by a family who doted on her – including three great-great-grandchildren born in the last decade of her life.

She often told stories about her youth. “She’d talk a lot about walking up and down Kentish Town with her best friend, and they used to dress the same. I found that really bizarre,” said her granddaughter, Sharon McGran.

“She used to talk about how there was a really big butcher’s, and all the shops were really big. She used to talk about Blustons. She’d say: ‘All the pubs have closed down’. “All the barrow boys used to sit in the pubs after work. That’s how she met her husband. She used to call them the ‘good old days’.”

Ms McGran added: “She missed the fact that you could go into a butcher’s, or you could go into a greengrocer’s. The whole supermarket thing was a really strange concept to her. “She used to talk about the bombings, she remembered that… she always spoke about how they were always so united, and everyone looked out for each other.”

Florence as a young woman and, below, with her grandchildren

Ms Fosbrook’s husband died early, leaving her to bring up their four children alone. This wasn’t the only tragedy she suffered in her life: she lost three of her four adult children long before their time. “I used to look at her and think: she was so tiny, she was such a tiny woman, but she had such inner strength. It always amazed me that she would just keep going,”

Ms McGran said. “I always called her ‘small but mighty’. She was very small but so ladylike and dignified. She was a typical twin-set and pearls nan, however, she could turn it on like a sailor when necessary… the contrast was hilarious.”

She remained “completely independent” until the very last weeks of her life.

“She was so switched on. She’d go, ‘Oh, that BoJo, he’s annoying – we need to get him out.’ She really had an opinion and knew everything that was going on all of the time,” Ms McGran said.

Family was always of central importance to Ms Fosbrook. Relatives would often visit her flat in Denton Tower to share salmon and cucumber sandwiches and she watched football and discussed it with her grandsons.

“She always knew the result,” said Ms Ms McGran. “That was more about her grandsons.

She loved to keep up to date so she could go, ‘have you been watching the football boys?’”

She died on June 16 following a hip replace­ment operation, surroun­ded by friends and family.