IT may have take a few years, but Wendy Bray is finally enjoying getting stuck into her career.

At the age of 81, you would think it was time for her to put her feet up, but the textile designer has just launched a range of wallpaper that feature sketches she made in the 1950s.

Wendy explains: “After I got married, Geoffrey’s work sent him all over the place. We lived in Germany and America and lived in nine different houses in ten years. “It was great fun. We had three little girls and a boy. This did all get in the way of doing design, but I did continue going to art classes.”

Launched at the Warner Textile Archive in Braintree, which was formerly a silk weaving business, the wallpaper range was based on designs made while she was training and working for Courtaulds, the prestigious fabric manufacturer. She filed the sketches away in her battered old portfolio, only to rediscover them years later.

They include repeat patterns of everyday scenes, such as lovers on a park bench, umbrellas and the New York skyline. They will be sold online from the Warner Textile Archive website and by retailers across the country.

Based at the company’s offices in central London, Wendy, then aged 20, was sent up to Courtauld’s Halstead mill as part of her training, where she met her future husband.

“Eighteen months later and we were married and we had a child straight away, which was absolutely foolish,” she laughs. “But I have no regrets.”

Four children, eight grandchildren and 60 years of marriage later, Wendy is back at work.

Wendy’s daughter originally rediscovered the designs and showed them to a friend, who happened to design rugs. Wendy sold some of her designs to the company and the work has been flowing since.

Wendy and her work then appeared in a six-page spread in World of Interiors magazine.

She says: “It was amazing. From that day on, my life has not been the same. Everything has turned upside down and it made me think – I am too old for this!”

Her designs have now been made into fabrics, stationery and cards.

But she admits she is enjoying every minute and looks upon it as her chance to develop her career, which she put on hold while she had children.

Wendy, who lived in Coggeshall Road, in Braintree for 18 months as part of her husband’s work with Courtaulds, has enjoyed a colourful life and has been able to use her experiences in her designs.

Having grown up in south London, Wendy, her two sisters and mother were evacuated to Hove, near Brighton, when she was eight. Wendy’s recollection of the war is crisp and clear, from the “wonderful Victorian villa” they lived in, to returning to London to find their house had been bombed. But one memory is particularly poignant, says Wendy.

“When we were in Hove, the beaches were all blocked off. So we went to the Downs and watched the Dunkirk evacuation, when the British had to retreat.

“They were helped across the Channel by anyone who had a boat. It was amazing to see all these boats floating across the water – it is the most stark recollection in my life.”

After the war, Wendy studied at the Croydon Art School and was taken on by Courtaulds, a textile factory, which at the time had its headquarters in St Martin’s Le Grand, on the sixth floor of a building overlooking London. Of course, at the time St Paul’s was the highest building in London,” laughs Wendy.

Not one to sit around, Wendy used what spare time she had from being a mother, and spent eight years serving on Daventry Council, an experience that makes her eyes light up.

“It was great fun. All these people would shout at each other. I used to love fighting it out with the other councillors!

“I left because I didn’t get on the policy and resources committee and was a bit resentful – but I got into painting instead,” says Wendy, who has also studied for a Masters of philosophy from Nottingham University.

But now it is Wendy’s turn to pick up her career, and Geoffrey is more than happy to play chauffeur.

“Geoffrey drives me around now,” she laughs.