Platinum wedding couple: 'They said it wouldn't last' (From The Oxford Times)

Platinum wedding couple: 'They said it wouldn't last'

5:00pm Saturday 19th May 2012 in Bicester By Sam McGregor, covering Bicester. Call me on 01869 250197

PEOPLE warned them marriage at 18 would never work, but 70 years on Fred and Sadie Lamb have proved them all wrong.

The couple met at school and married a few years later when they learned engineer Mr Lamb would be called up for service during the Second World War.

He joined the Fleet Air Arm as a air mechanic, and after training was based at RAF Heston, near to where Heathrow Airport was eventually built, for most of the war.

It also meant he would be home every night as the couple lived in Sunbury, Middlesex.

Mrs Lamb, 88, of Somerton Road, Ardley, near Bicester, said: “We used to walk home from school together and were always friends. At 16 we got engaged.

“We got married when we were both 18, much to some people’s disapproval. His parents didn’t approve, but my mum and dad were fine.

“We were disappointed by one or two comments and we used to say we’ll show them, and we have.”

After the war the couple set up an engineering business, FD Lamb and Son, which later became H&F Hydraulics, and had branches in Reading and Murdock Road, Bicester, employing about a dozen people.

Building up their business and bringing up their three children Freddie, 68, Pauline, 65, and Julie, 52, became their focus, with Mrs Lamb helping to work the factory machines when the business first started.

After Fred retired in the mid- 1980s, his son Freddie set up hydraulics firm Hycon Hydraulics, in Reading, which he still runs with his sons.

Fred, also 88, was a former footballer in Sunbury, but after he broke a toe he trained as a referee.

Asked the secret of a long and happy marriage, Mrs Lamb, nee Elford, said it was being able to talk through their differences over a cup of tea.

She said: “In my opinion it’s give and take, and understanding each other. If you have words my advice is to always be able to both sit down and talk about it over a cup of tea.”

The couple, who have 10 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, celebrated their platinum anniversary with a party at the Fox and Hounds pub, in Ardley.