A WOMAN who lived in the same house all her life passed away shortly before Christmas.

Joan Farley (79) lived in a home in Temple Houses in Haydon Bridge since she was one year old, and she became a big part of village life for close to eight decades.

A former haberdasher at Hexham’s Robb’s department store and assistant at Haydon Bridge Chemist, Joan was well-known in the community.

Her cousin Joyce Gate said: “She lived in Haydon Bridge all her life so I would imagine everybody knew her, and when they came into the chemists, she would always chat to them.

“She always had a nice word for people and she was always good fun.

“I think she got on with everybody.”

After her parents moved to Haydon Bridge when she was a baby, Joan never had any intentions of moving away and she went to school in the village.

She left school when she was 15 to work in a draper’s shop in Hexham’s Market Place, before she started work in the haberdashery department in Robb’s.

Joyce said: “She used to help a lot of people with anything to do with sewing, and that was a big passion of hers.”

When Robb’s closed, Joan moved on to work in the chemist in Haydon Bridge where she worked until her retirement.

During her retirement years, Joan liked nothing better than visiting shopping centres across the North-East, according to Joyce.

“When she retired and got her bus pass, she used to go all over the region, especially Newcastle, and she said she was going for a mooch, a look around, the shops,” she said.

“Other than that, she always came to us and spend Christmas with us.”

Joan was not married and did not have any children of her own, but was always a great ‘aunt’ to Joyce’s three children, and godmother to one.

A funeral service at Carlisle Crematorium was due to take place at 1pm on Thursday.