Golden Wedding papercutting: “Oxford Mail” 1975

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The Oxford Mail’s account of Rosie and Arthur’s wedding. What an amazing story! “We just made up our minds on the spur of the moment” and “Afterwards, we went and told our parents”. They had met at a dance in Witney. Shades of my 1959 girl-friend connections with Eynsham! Rosie was a local Oxford girl, my research shows, with family connections to Lytham St Annes, Lancs. And I see that they were both 72 at the date of their golden wedding (cf me: I shall be 75 next year). So, as Arthur’s year of birth was 1903, the year of the golden wedding must have been 1975. But what a storm must have come forth when they did break the news to WGRA (Arthur’s father) at the very least. Not the way that Archers do things! A proper Methodist wedding (as WGRA had) is what is needed! Though I think it most unlikely that Arthur was in any way regular at Walton Street Methodist Chapel, where his grandfather used to preach whose funeral there in 1916, nine years before their wedding in 1925, had been such a massive affair, according to the account of it in the Methodist Recorder.(pba.22.8.2015).

qaa© Philip B Archer 2014