A sleeping woman had the shock of her life when her bedroom ceiling came crashing down on top of her.

Elizabeth Kelly, 69, was dozing off on the May Bank Holiday Monday when she heard a scratching sound in her home in Burma Road, Stoke Newington.

“It brought me out of my sleep,” she told the Gazette. “I leaned up to see and thought it must be a mouse above the wardrobe or something.

“Then I heard a cracking and next thing I knew it went: ‘Bang’ and fell down on top of me.”

Luckily the main debris missed Elizabeth, but only by inches.

She continued: “I started screaming and through it all off me. It was on my head and I was covered in dust.

“My husband came running in and nearly died. He put me sitting on the edge of the bed because I couldn’t get my legs out I was so shocked. I just got a glass of water and started crying.”

Elizabeth was so shaken up she couldn’t go into the bedroom for days.

She was told by a workman sent round by landlord Peabody the next day that if her fitted wardrobe hadn’t been above her bed she would have been hit by the large chunk of rubble that fell beside her.

Elizabeth’s husband Michael, 77, complained last week because the ceiling hadn’t been fixed three weeks on, and all the workers had done was board up the ceiling.

It wasn’t until this week, after the Gazette had contacted the housing association, that anyone came round to fix it properly.

Michael said: “Someone came around on Tuesday last week and we thought they were going to fix it but they said: ‘We won’t do it today, we’ll do it next Tuesday’.

“But no-one turned up on Tuesday. Instead workers turned up unannounced on Wednesday at 7,30am.”

Peabody has been contacted for comment but the Gazette understands an investigation is ongoing into the leak in the property above that caused the ceiling to collapse.