AT 113-years-old Ethel Lang may be the oldest woman in Britain, but her daughter says she has taken the news in her stride!

She was announced as the oldest in the UK following the death of Londoner Grace Jones on December 14, also 113, who was the last living British person to be born in the 1800s.

There were only 171 days between Grace and Barnsley lass Ethel, who marked her 113th birthday in May with a piece of cake and a cup of tea.

Mrs Lang's daughter, 89-year-old Margaret Bates, said: "Like everything else, my mother has taken this in her stride.

"Anyone would be pleased to have their mother for as long as they can."

Denise Bates, Ethel's granddaughter-in-law, said the supercentenarian is not only the oldest in the country but also one of the last living subjects of Queen Victoria.

Ethel was born in 1900 in Worsbrough Dale and has seen six monarchs and 22 Prime Ministers.

As the youngest daughter of miner Charles Lancaster and his wife Sarah, Ethel was born when the Marquess of Salisbury was Prime Minister.

She has lived in Barnsley all her life, in Monk Bretton and Carlton, and left school at 13 to go and work at a shirt factory.

In 1922 she married William Lang, a young plumber and the only son of Barnsley councillor Thomas Lang, at St Mary's Church, Barnsley.

One year later the couple celebrated the birth of daughter Margaret.

Ethel, who was widowed in 1988, used to work as a dressmaker and her hobbies included dancing - which she enjoyed up to turning 107.

She is also a snooker fan, with Jimmy White being her favourite player.

Widow Ethel lived independently until she was 105 when she moved into a Barnsley care home.

On marking her 111th birthday at the home she said: "When I was a little girl I played skipping, hopscotch and buttons. We used to throw them as far as they could go and you would measure it with your fingers.

"Mum wouldn't let me use her clothes line to skip, we used an old one that was dirty."

Denise said: "For that generation, living through the wars was just something they took in their stride.

"She was just a very ordinary Barnsley girl who did ordinary things that Barnsley women did."

It seems genetics are on Ethel's side as her mother died at 91, and when Denise did her family tree, she found very long-lived ancestors on Ethel's side going back to the 1700s.