Memories of the Southern Daily Echo have been recalled by a 90-year-old who ran its Winchester district office with her journalist husband for 40 years.

Eileen Percy’s life in newspapers began with a move to the Isle of Wight with her husband Harold, a respected Hampshire journalist, where the couple took charge of the Echo’s Newport office.

Then they moved back to the mainland to a workplace where milk was delivered to her office by horse and cart and her cat used to sit on the front counter to greet visitors.

She told the paper as she celebrated her 90th birthday: “Everyone used to come to the Echo to buy their newspapers and place adverts – or just to gossip, because I knew about everything that was going on.

“We lived in rooms around the office and it was lovely being right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the High Street.”

Harold had been appointed manager and reporter-in-charge at Winchester before war broke out and Eileen was put in charge of the admin work.

Despite having blinds up at the windows like the other shops during wartime, theirs was the busiest as people tried to find the latest news on what was happening.

Changes to the paper meant the couple moved – with the district office – to Upper Brook Street in the early 1960s where they continued to serve readers until Harold died in 1970.

She said: “I do miss the old High Street as it used to be, but I still get the Daily Echo every day and still love reading it.”

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