The Morris family ran The Fishes at North Hinksey, Oxford, for more than 40 years.

One member, Florence Morris, who kept customers happy at the popular pub, has just celebrated her 104th birthday at her home in Canada.

Mrs Morris and her husband Bertie were in charge from 1949 until his death in 1962. They had taken over from Bertie’s father, Arthur, who had been landlord since 1919.

Mrs Morris, whose maiden name was Wickson, was born in Somerset but moved to Cowley at an early age and won a scholarship to the Oxford Central Girls’ School in New Inn Hall Street.

After leaving school, she worked at the Midland Bank (now HSBC) at Carfax.

She met Bertie on the galloping horses at the gasworks fete in Grandpont and they married at North Hinksey Church in 1935.

Mr Morris worked at Morris Motors, and after volunteering for the Army in the Second World War, was commissioned as captain and served with the Royal Army Service Corps.

He took part in the D-Day landings, but suffered shellshock and was medically discharged.

After her husband’s death from cancer, Mrs Morris tried to get back into banking, but no bank in Oxford would employ her, claiming she was too old at 50.

She went to Canada with her younger daughter, Susan, for a holiday and stayed there.

Getting a banking job in Canada proved easier as she had a school certificate in French, a language widely spoken in the country.

Her older daughter, Jane Hills, of Shipton-under-Wychwood, recalls: “She worked in the bank in Canada until she was 73. When she asked about retiring at 65, they told her politely to ‘shut up and get on with your job’.”

Mrs Morris celebrated her 104th birthday with a tea party at her home in Markham, Toronto.

Mrs Hills’s husband, Prof Peter Hills, tells me: “Florence still lives on her own and cooks for herself.

“Daughter Susan and her family live in a nearby township and she receives help with shopping from them and local friends and attends her church regularly.

“Last year she fell and broke her pelvis but after a spell in hospital she was back at home and soon organising and going door to door to collect money for people who had suffered in a bad storm in north east Canada.

“When we called her recently, she had gone out to buy a new bed cover!”

Mrs Hills’s verdict on her mother at 104? “She’s amazing.”

The history of The Fishes can be traced back to the 15th century when “an alehouse at North Hinksey was purchased by Brasenose College”.

It was recorded as the Fish public house in 1842 with “sheds, hovel, skittle alley and garden”. It was pulled down in 1885 and rebuilt in the now familiar red brick and tiling nearer the road.

The road had been built in part by a group of Oxford undergraduates working in 1874 under the orders of the Slade Professor of Art, John Ruskin, who believed labour good for the student soul. Among them was 19-year-old Magdalen student Oscar Wilde.

The pub has always been popular, particularly because of its setting beside the attractive Hinksey Stream, its large garden and the devotion of its regulars to the Oxfordshire game of Aunt Sally.