Two old schoolfriends have rekindled their friendship in their 90s after they both moved in to the same block of retirement flats.

And Betty James and Joan Ellis have discovered their lives have had astonishing similarities in the intervening years.

Born in the same year, they first met at the age of 11 at the Intermediate School in Brighton in 1931, and during the Second World War Betty joined the Land Army to work as a market gardener while Joan was called up to work as a welder in a munitions factory.

Both married their husbands in 1944, they were both married on the same month as their birthdays, both had two children born in 1947 and 1949, and both lived in Scaynes Hill.

After the war Betty and her husband Alec ran a carpentry business in Brighton whilst Joan’s husband Reg managed a saw mill.

Betty said: “It’s incredible that we have shared so many coincidences. Each time we meet we seem to share something new.”

The two old friends met again after Betty decided to downsize from her two-bedroom house in Scaynes Hill following the death of her husband, and move into a one-bedroom flat at Hanover Court retirement housing estate in Amberley Close, Haywards Heath.

Joan, who was already living there, was working in her kitchen one day when she saw a very familiar face walking past her window.

She realized that it was her old classmate Joan and the two have now become good friends, spending time reminiscing over old memories and making a few new ones.

Joan said: “It has taken us over 80 years to get there but we have now become really good friends.”

Between them, Betty and Joan have four children, eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.