SCULPTRESS Mary Spencer Watson has been renewing old acquaintances. Salisbury Museum is currently hosting the first major retrospective of her work, which runs until December 4.

The installation of some 50 pieces of sculpture in the museum and Salisbury Cathedral has given her the chance to revisit her earlier pieces, some of which she hasn't seen for more than 70 years.

"It's been a great thrill - seeing them again," she says. "I have my favourites, but I mustn't say which: it's like a parent with children."

Now in her nineties, and still working, she has been producing sculpture in stone, terracotta and wood since the 1930s.

Outside the museum is Eland (1952), a mythical creature with a child riding its back, commissioned for Wyke Regis Primary School in Dorset.

On the other side of the Close, Hero (1954), a figure inspired by Greek legend and carved from ash, strides impressively across the cathedral cloisters.

Inside the cathedral, several spiritual pieces join the permanent installation of Jesus and Mary (1995), including the 2002 carving Herald Angel, created in response to the attack on the World Trade Centre.

"I found the piece of stone in the spring - I didn't know what to do with it and I couldn't get inspiration from it and then there was this tragedy," says Mary.

"Man has got to learn that this sort of war does not work. This forceful thought turned into a herald angel - quite a savage creature."

It is carved from Purbeck stone, quarried near Mary's Dorset home. Born in 1913, Mary and her family moved in 1923 to Dunshay Manor on the Isle of Purbeck, which remains Mary's home to this day.

The house is built in a hollow excavated when stone was being quarried to build the new cathedral at Sarum 800 years ago, giving a satisfying full circle feel to this retrospective of her work.

"I was brought up close to the quarries and I found it fascinating watching the stone slide out of the ground on carts pulled up by a capstan worked by donkey.

"The man who owned the quarry saw I was serious - I was about 11 - gave me the tools and helped cut the stone."

Her father was RA artist George Spencer Watson. Her mother, Hilda, was a dancer and mime artist. With artistic parents, it was almost inevitable that Mary would follow a creative path in life.

"I did have it from both sides," she says. "As a child, you don't realise it, it's only when you go to college - and I was very young - that you realise you know a lot of things that the older ones don't.

"It came from conversations at mealtimes and helping my father stretch canvases and wash his brushes."

She went to the Central School of Arts & Crafts, in London, where she trained under John Skeaping, and later travelled to Paris where she was inspired by Ossip Zadkine. Seventy years on, she is still going strong.

"Artists don't retire - they can't escape this thing called imagination that's always on their backs. I was brought up by a mother who said it didn't matter how old someone is, look at the person they are."

Mary Spencer Watson Sculpture Retrospective runs until December 4. An exhibition on Dunshay runs concurrently in the museum's upper gallery.