LOCAL historian, poet and artist Nessie Gell says “being able to laugh at life” is the key to staying happy and healthy, after celebrating her 100th birthday.

Agnes Purves, or ‘Nessie’, was born as at Ugston, a farm two miles outside Haddington, on September 6, 1924, the seventh child of George and Marion Purves.

The family moved to Whittingehame early in Nessie's life and, at the age of 15, a job was found for her as an under-nanny to the famous Balfour family.

She said: “I did not like this at all, I wanted to become a teacher, and was so frustrated at having to leave school.

“But you did what your parents told you, and my mother and father thought it was an honour to be asked.”

While working as a nanny with the Pentland family at Peebles, she attended a dance in the Drill Hall where she met Fred Gell, who was in the medical corps of the army, stationed at Peebles Hydro at the time.  

After a short courtship, Fred and Nessie married in 1945 in Gullane Parish Church. 

The couple lived in Gullane, Longformacus and then Haddington while raising their children Penny, Ruth, Philip, Carolyn, Mandy and William.

Although Nessie was unable to become a teacher in her youth, her love of school, history, writing, learning and the creative arts always stayed with her.  

One of her penned poems Marking Time was picked up and published in the Scots Magazine in February 2020. The feature now proudly hangs on her bedroom wall, alongside a number of her original paintings, a hobby which she decided to actively pursue in her seventies.  

One of Nessie's paintings (Image: East Lothian Health & Social Care Partnership)

However, it was in her eighties that Nessie went on her biggest adventure of all.  

Her older brother Sgt Tom Purves served as a regular soldier in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders from 1925 to 1933.  In 1939, he was recalled and posted to Singapore.  

Tom earned the Military Medal for holding a position on the Grik Road at Lemppong, Malaya, where he sustained wounds from which he later died in the Alexandra Military Hospital, Singapore, just a few days before the fall of Singapore in February 1942.  

In 2005, ahead of the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the BBC were planning a documentary entitled VJ Heroes: Scotland’s Jungle War.

Nessie was invited to be part of the documentary and, while in Singapore, they found the plaque at the military hospital which included her brother’s name, and Nessie left a bunch of poppies, thistles and heather in his memory.

While in her eighties, Nessie put her interest and knowledge of East Lothian life to good use and became one of the founding members of Haddington Remembered.  

A series of health conditions resulted in Nessie moving into Tranent's Crookston Care Home in 2020; however, her family say that the move gave her a new lease of life.  

When asked if there was a secret to reaching her century, Nessie said: “Just dealing with what life gives you, I suppose, and being able to laugh about it: being able to laugh at life.”  

“I’ve had a wonderful life and I enjoy reliving it. I’ve always got a story to tell, and they are all good. You know why? Because they are all true.”