A war veteran and master stonemason from Stroud celebrated his 100th birthday on Saturday with his close family.

Ronald Packer turned 100 on October 31 and he was delighted with his card from the queen.

Ron was born in Amberley.

His father, Harold Packer, was an engineer in the Stroud valleys until 1925, when work became scarce. Harold cycled to Swindon and got a job in the Great Western Railway workshops and the family soon followed him and Ron grew up in Swindon.

Ron was taken on as an apprentice stonemason when he was 15 years old.

After a spell in the Home Guard, Ron volunteered for the RAF, hoping to become a navigator. He wasn’t allowed to join until his apprenticeship was completed, so it was 1940 when he was posted to Bomber Command at an airfield in Yorkshire.

Ron was put in charge of a fire crash tender at the airfield. This was good luck as it was there that he met his future wife, Mary, a WAAF driver. They married before Ron was posted abroad.

At the end of the war, Ron was serving in Burma. Japan surrendered in August 1945, and he was then sent to Singapore, so he didn’t get home until June 1946.

Ron went back to work as a journeyman mason in Swindon. When his employers decided to retire in the mid-1950s, Ron and his wife Mary bought the business and yard in Swindon and Ron became a master stonemason.

He retired in the late 1980s.

Ron also devised an effective way of making artificial stone for the National Trust, and the firm’s work can still be seen at Charlecote Park and Buscot.

Ron said: “I could be fixing a finial at the top of a church spire one week and inscribing a commemorative tablet in a civic building the next. But my favourite has always been decorative carving, work which occasionally came my way. You never knew who would walk into the yard and what they would be wanting us to do for them.”

One of his daughters said: “It was wonderful to watch Dad letter cutting or carving stone, the rhythmical tapping of the hammer and the chisel quickly working around the shape as if it were cutting into something soft rather than hard stone."

Ron first restored a stone built charity school in the village of Crudwell. It was in a very bad state of repair but eventually he and Mary were able to complete the renovation and move in.

Not able to be idle, Ron and Mary then took on a new project: West Grange in Stroud, which was also in need of renovation. A Victorian stone built mansion in the Gothic style, West Grange was designed by Benjamin Bucknell, (who also designed Woodchester Mansion). So Ron has lived for the last 30 years within a few miles of where he was born, 100 years ago.

Always a keen Gardener, Ron was a founding member of the Stroud Horticultural Society. He was at one time Chairman and then President of the Stroud British Legion. Living in Stroud, Ron was able to attend talks given at Probus for very many years and, in fact, gave several member talks himself on various topics.