KEIGHLEY church leader Annie Clymo spent most of the First World War on the frontline as a nurse.

The Methodist deaconess was sent to a war hospital in France in 1915 to serve with the Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment.

Annie, who was born in Norfolk in 1873, remained in France until 1919 and received several medals for her overseas service.

Annie, nee Hasseldine, married Thomas Clymo in 1900, but her husband died in 1907 from food poisoning after they ate a meal of tinned salmon.

Annie narrowly survived, and by 1911 was living in Keighley and working as a deaconess at the Temple Street Wesleyan Methodist Church.

She was renowned for carrying out continuous work for long hours for the church, and in 1915 was forced to stop due to ill-health from overwork.

One month later, Annie began training with the Red Cross and became a full-time VAD nurse in France.

It is believed she then trained as a midwife in Scotland, and she served into the early 1950s at Keswick in Cumberland.

Living in Borrowdale for many years, she died in 1964 in 1991.