Diamond day for Hatch Warren sweethearts (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Diamond day for Hatch Warren sweethearts

7:00am Friday 7th September 2012 in Local By Chris Gregory

A TEENAGE romance turned into a lifetime of love for Ted and Joyce Bennett.

Family, friends and former colleagues came together to celebrate the Basingstoke couple’s diamond wedding anniversary.

More than 120 people came to the Beechdown Health and Fitness Club, in Winchester Road, to raise a glass to the happy couple.

Ted and Joyce, of Mayfield Ridge, Hatch Warren, first met as teenagers near Watford, where Ted was working on a new housing estate.

They married in August 1952 at St Paul’s Church, in Hammersmith Broadway, London, and 10 years later, they moved to Basingstoke into a semi-detached house in Pinkerton Road, South Ham.

Ted, now 82, came to Basingstoke as a plumber but later became a dustman and then a handyman for manufacturing firm ITT Cannon, in Viables, where Joyce also worked as a saleswoman.

The couple have three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and their celebration dinner at Beechdown saw family members come from as far away as Devon.

Joyce, 78, said their large family plays an important part in the strength of their marriage, as well as a love of going on cruises around the world.

She told The Gazette : “We have just plodded through the years and I cannot believe how many years it has been. Our lives mainly revolve around the family – and we have a very big family.”