THEY weighed just 6lbs between them at birth and one was given little chance of survival but this week a pair of twins celebrated their 90th birthday just yards from the spot where they came into the world.

Frank Moody and Mary Brennan were joined by more than 50 friends at their joint birthday party in the Red Rover pub at West Wellow on Monday.

They were born just over the road at a house named Rossmore, whose present owner Diane McMullan was among their party guests.

Frank arrived first and tipped the scales at just two and half pounds.

“The doctor said there’s another on the way and my mother passed out,” said Mary.

She arrived a few moments later weighing a pound more than her older brother.

The two newborns were put in drawers taken, from a chest of drawers, and placed in front of the fire to keep warm.

“The doctor told my mother she ought to get Frank christened right away as babies that size were unlikely to survive but she didn’t and later she told Frank that she always knew he would live,” said Mary.

The twins were christened three months later and a photo of them in their christening gowns was on show at the party.

Their father, Alfred, was a farmer and butcher. He was great friends with the landlord of the Red Rover, Billy Clarke, who let him use his garage as his first butcher’s shop.

“For a chopping block he used tree stump,” said Mary.

Later Alfred, his wife Susan, the twins and their younger brother, Alan, moved to Earldoms Farm, in Landford.

Following their father’s death Alan took over the farm and Frank ran the butcher’s shop.

In 1972 Frank bought a shop on the A36 and turned it into what is now West Wellow Stores.

Frank spent 71 years, working in the family business, finally hanging up his apron at 82.

He was called up during the war and fought with the Royal Artillery in Italy. His former sergeant, Charlie White, who has remained a friend, attended the party. By coicidence he shares his birthday with the twins an was celebrating his 95th on Monday.

As a teenager Mary’s first job was the admin for the family business but in the war she worked in the offices of the Saunders-Roe aircraft factory at Melchet Court.

After the war she worked for the Inland Revenue at Salisbury before returning to the family business. Mary ran a pig unit and delivered meat around the area in a van and even learned butchery herself – a rare job for a women in the 1950s.

The van would often get punctures and Mary recalls that she would stand by the roadside “looking as though I was changing the wheel” and a gallant male motorist would always stop and help her out.

After a while Mary fancied a return to an office job and chance took her back to Melchet Court, by then home to St Edward’s School for what, in those days, were called “delinquent” boys.

She became secretary to the headmaster for 12 years and then became matron, a role which she took on with no experience.

While working as matron, the head, Tom Brennan, by now widowed, proposed and Mary accepted telling him: “It takes a good man to catch me.”

The pair were married for almost 25 years until Tom’s death in 2000, a day before Mary’s birthday. The couple had retired to Lyndhurst, where Mary still lives.

Keeping busy in retirement Mary founded the New Forest branch of the charity Wessex Medical Research and Frank has been a stalwart of the Royal British Legion.