BRITAIN'S oldest person, 109-year-old Eva Pickles, has died in a New Forest rest home just a day after confirmation of her claim to be the country's most senior citizen.

Shortly after celebrating her 109th birthday in June, Eva inherited the mantle of the country's oldest resident following the death of a 114-year-old in the North.

But official confirmation by Guinness World Records of her longevity title only arrived at the Waterside rest home in Fordingbridge the day before she died.

Born Eva Ponting in Swindon in 1891, she won a scholarship to a technical college but her ambitions to train as a teacher were thwarted by illness, and instead she was apprenticed, without pay, to a millinery store in London.

On holiday in Torquay, Eva met Fred Pickles, a gents outfitter from Bradford, and they were married in 1926 at the Congregational church in Fordingbridge, where her family then lived.

The couple opened their own drapery shop in Swindon, and when Fred died in 1940 Eva carried on the business until retiring in 1951 when she moved to Fordingbridge, where she was a stalwart of the Congregational church and a keen choral singer.

Increasing frailty forced her to move to the Waterside rest home shortly before her 99th birthday but she remained active and alert to the last, and as the town's oldest resident she was the first to sign the Fordingbridge millennium book earlier this year.

Typically, her response to the news that she was officially the oldest woman in the country was: "What's the point of that, it would better to be the cleverest."

A non-smoker and almost teetotal, Eva attributed her longevity to avoidance of pills and medicines.