Retired royal milliner celebrates milestone birthday (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

Retired royal milliner celebrates milestone birthday

2:01pm Wednesday 14th January 2009

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A RETIRED hat maker in the region - who counted the Queen and the Queen Mother among her clients - has celebrated her 104th birthday.

Ellen Warboys, of Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, was a milliner to the royal family when the Queen Mother was the young Queen Consort of King George VI.

Mrs Warboys, who lives at the Boroughbridge Manor care home, in Roecliffe Lane, war born in London, in 1905.

She began her working career at the age of 14 at the Admiralty in Whitehall.

But, with her flair for art, she was unhappy and decided to move on.

With the help of her parents, she embarked on an apprenticeship in millinery at the prestigious Madame Henri salon, in Mayfair.

"The Admiralty wasn’t for me," she said. "I wanted to make things. I had always been able to paint and draw.

"The salon was opposite the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly. We made ladies hats. My mother and my father had to pay £25 to get me an apprenticeship.

"I had to do four years apprenticeship and the first year I made two shillings and six."

She soon found herself making hats for the cream of the British nobility, including the Queen, or Princess Elizabeth as she then was.

Hats made by Mrs Warboys were worn at society events, including Royal Ascot.

"We had to learn etiquette," she said. "If the queen came in, we had to bow and say your majesty and then call her ma’am.

"If one of the princesses came in, we had to do the same and call her madam."

Mrs Warboys continued to work at the salon until she married, in 1929, at the age of 24, and afterwards kept only a few select clients.

She said: "I was married in the year of the great slump. After I married, I gave up work.

"Married women did not work in those days.

"Sometimes, people would come to me and ask if I could make them a hat, so I still did a few private commissions."

She moved to Yorkshire in the Fifties with her husband, Cecil, who had been a civil servant working in the Lord Chancellors office, when their son was posted to RAF Leeming for his National Service.

Mrs Warboys celebrated her birthday with a party for friends and family, in the home, yesterday.

A spokeswoman for the home said: "Mrs Warboys is very popular with the residents, and we had a big party for her.

"They had a whale of a time."

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