A midwife who delivered two of her own grandchildren has retired after a career spanning more than 40 years.

Marion Woodward

Marion Woodward, 64, has delivered hundreds of babies in Oxfordshire, some of whom have grown up and had their own children.

But now she has given up her job as a community midwife at Islip Surgery to run a tea shop on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides.

She said: "I'll miss it terribly because I just love delivering babies. I have really loved getting to know all the parents.

"But I want to leave while I can still enjoy other things."

Mrs Woodward, of Tubney, near Abingdon, qualified as a midwife in 1963 after doing her training at the Churchill Hospital, in Headington.

She started work as a district midwife in Bicester, before moving to Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary in 1970.

Two years later she transferred to the newly opened John Radcliffe Hospital, in Headington, which took over maternity services from the Radcliffe Infirmary and Churchill.

She said: "The Churchill was always freezing. It was all huts in those days and we brought our own electric heaters to keep warm.

"I was on duty on the night the JR first opened. It was absolute chaos because it was an amalgamation of the RI and the Churchill!"

She worked at the JR until 1992. After a three-year break, Mrs Woodward returned to work in Islip.

Her fondest memories include the mothers and babies she has looked after over the years, including the delivery of her daughter-in-law Emmanwella Lowry's two children Salix, three, and Fabien, four.

She said: "She wanted me to deliver them. The first was delivered in an old British Telecom truck which they'd bought to go travelling in.

"She wanted to give birth in there and it was really quite cosy.

"Her second was born in France, where they lived. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to deliver the baby, because I wasn't registered there.

"But in the end it was such a quick delivery that the midwife didn't arrive in time anyway!"

Other families have stayed in touch or remember her in the street, years after receiving her help. "The father of the first baby I delivered in the community played the organ at my wedding and we exchange Christmas cards with the family every year," said Mrs Woodward.

"I was walking through Bicester the other day and a woman recognised me and asked if I remembered her baby, which was an undiagnosed breech birth. I said I'd never forget her!"

Mrs Woodward is moving next week, but has passed on her midwifery skills to her daughter Anna Antell, who is a maternity assistant at the JR.