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My mother, Irene Purdy, who has died aged 104, was a factory worker turned school pianist and teacher. She also spent many years involved in amateur dramatics in her native Rochdale, Lancashire (now part of Greater Manchester).

Irene first took to the stage in the 1950s, regularly appearing in plays performed by three companies, the Kirkholt Amateur Dramatic Society (KADS), the Alumni, and the Curtain Theatre Company. She also produced plays for KADS and light operas for the Kirkholt Gilbert and Sullivan Society. In 1978, with her husband, Tom, she took over the writing of the Amateur Stage column of the Rochdale Observer, reviewing all local amateur productions until Tom’s death in 1983.

Born in Rochdale, Irene was the only child of Charles Gaunt and Emily (nee Hardwick), both mill workers. At the age of three she was injured by falling glass when a runaway horse reared up against a shop window and smashed it. Her parents were awarded compensation and used the money to buy a piano, on which she became adept.

She left Rochdale parish church school in 1935 at 14 to work in a sweet shop, before switching to a factory making paper tubes for cotton spinning mills. In 1942, by which time her factory had begun to make aircraft propellers to help the second world war effort, she married Tom Purdy, a painter and decorator who was then working on tank assembly at Ford’s in Trafford Park, Manchester; he later served in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

Irene eventually left the factory to bring up their two children, Christine and me, but returned to the workplace from 1947 to 1964 with the Rochdale education committee, who employed her for most of that period as a peripatetic pianist, playing the piano for singing and dancing lessons in schools across the town.

After taking A-level English and a couple of O-levels, in 1965 Irene completed a one-year teacher training course in Manchester that was specially designed to cater for mature women who had missed out on further education.

Thereafter she taught English, drama and music for nearly 20 years at Redbrook high school in Rochdale, until shortly before Tom’s death. She then enrolled as a part-time student on a BA general arts course offered by the Open University. Six years later, pushing 70, she graduated.

In 1990 Irene became a member of Growing Old Disgracefully, a national organisation that provides older women with opportunities to meet, talk about their lives, explore new ideas and have fun.

She is survived by her children, five grandchildren, Rowan, Jake, Tom, Frances and Lewis, and eight great-grandchildren.