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Hilda and Harold keep smiling after 70 years

Hilda and Harold Walling celebrate their platinum anniversary
Hilda and Harold Walling celebrate their platinum anniversary

Hilda and Harold Walling celebrate their platinum anniversary. Picture by Grant Falvey.

by Lynn Cox

lcox@thekmgroup.co.uk

This Medway couple have plenty to smile about after celebrating 70 years of wedded bliss.
Harold and Hilda Walling met when they were teenagers and courted for six years before they tied the knot.
Harold, who will be 95 in August, and Hilda, 93, were married in 1939 at the former St Mary’s Church in Dock Road, Chatham, and shared the ceremony with Hilda’s sister Edie and her husband Arthur Neave.
Shortly after the double wedding, Harold who was with the Territorial Army, was called up for service and the couple spent their early married life apart, as the Second World War broke out.
Courted
Hilda said: “We met in Chatham near Sun Pier, my family home was in Globe Lane and the moment I saw Harold I knew he was the one for me. We courted for six years before we go married so have been together for 76 years.
“We went to Folkestone for our honeymoon and in the early days we lived London, Harold went off to do his service and I was working in an aircraft factory.
“I was nearly killed in the bombings, it was our early married life it was hard not being together.”
After the war, the couple moved back to Medway and bought their first home in Magpie Hall Road.
Hilda became a seamstress and had her own alteration business for a time, and later worked at former Hayward’s store in Chatham for 33 years. She didn’t give up work until she was 75.
Harold became a butcher for Dewhurst and later worked for the Gas Board.
He also had a good singing voice which left Hilda swooning.
They later moved to Princes Park and say they have enjoyed a happy life living in the area.
Ten years ago, on the 60th anniversary, the couple renewed their wedding vows, at the Church of Christ the King, in Dove Close, near to where they live now.
The couple have nieces and a nephew, but have never had children of their own.

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