Eddie and Margaret Allen, both born and raised in Essex, celebrate their golden wedding this week in Wootton Bassett, where they have lived for more than forty years.

Eddie, 74 and Margaret, 76, first met as youngsters, through a mutual friend of their parents, but Margaret spent more than three years away from home, as a wartime evacuee in Cornwall.

They discovered a shared enthusiasm for classical music when they met again on a bus home from a Beethoven concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

"I was with friends from the bank where I worked, and I suddenly realised 'that's Edmund Allen!'" recalled Margaret (nee Farrington).

"He was with his late sister, Heather. She was bridesmaid at our wedding the following year."

After their wedding at St Michael & All Angels, Manor Park, on March 7, 1953, and a reception at a local hall, they honeymooned at the Falstaff Hotel in Canterbury. They plan to go back there for a nostalgic weekend this spring.

Eddie, who worked for the Plessey Company, was relocated to Swindon 42 years ago. The couple, who by then had two sons David (born in 1958) and Peter (born in 1960) settled in the new Gough Cooper estate at Wootton Bassett.

Now they have five grandchildren a girl and four boys.

Reflecting on their fifty years together, Mrs Allen said: "I think there has to be a lot of love and understanding in a marriage for it to be a success.

"Life's never all plain sailing, but it's really worth making the effort, and we feel very fortunate."