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Diamond wedding celebrations
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| Geoffrey and Vivien Broughton celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary on the Bridgwater canal |
A NORTH Newton couple who met at a train station during the Second World War have celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary.
Sixty years after Geoffrey Broughton married Vivien Donne at Castle Cary, the couple marked the occasion by taking a trip in a barge on the Bridgwater canal.
Geoffrey first saw Vivien on the platform at Durston Station when she was looking stunning in her Voluntary Aid Detachment uniform, having come down from Weston-super-Mare where she was stationed during the war.
Raised at Impens Farm, North Newton, Geoffrey was unable to fulfil his wish to become a pilot during the war as farming was a reserved occupation, but he became an officer in the local Home Guard.
After the war, he bought the old Italian prisoner of war camp next to Halswell House in Goathurst and had great fun experimenting with explosives to blow up all the buildings and return the land to farm use.
Vivien has been a faithful secretary to Impens Farm all her married life.
She has carried out endless work for charity and is still active with the Women's Institute and regularly canvasses for the Conservative Party.
These activities have been combined with her duties as a wife and a mother to two daughters, Rosie and Diana, and her son James, who has now taken over the farm.
They now have nine grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and another on the way.
On their anniversary, their postman delivered a card from the Queen congratulating them on their diamond wedding anniversary.
12:05pm Tuesday 13th May 2008
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CommentPosted by: Railway Relish, Choo Choo Land on 6:59pm Thu 15 May 08
Very interesting to read of Durston Station. There is nothing much left of it today but it seems Durston was once a busy station. Now it seems to be private land, but if you can gain access you may, if looking very carefully, spot the long-overgrown remains of a platform, and traces of the old trackbeds. A relative worked on Durston Station"s W. H. Smith book stall as a young man, sometime in the pre first-world-war period, perhaps about 1910 to 1914. Old photos of this fascinating station may well exist.
Very interesting to read of Durston Station. There is nothing much left of it today but it seems Durston was once a busy station. Now it seems to be private land, but if you can gain access you may, if looking very carefully, spot the long-overgrown remains of a platform, and traces of the old trackbeds. A relative worked on Durston Station"s W. H. Smith book stall as a young man, sometime in the pre first-world-war period, perhaps about 1910 to 1914. Old photos of this fascinating station may well exist.
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