I lived in Jennings Street next door to Marjory Adams (who is also in the school picture I sent information about) from 1950 to about 1958. I do have another class picture but I am not sure if I can get it scanned in. I will see.
My parents and I moved from South Wales to Swindon. My father, William Arthur Pembridge, had been a coal minor, but was invalided out of the pits and after some time of unemployment, found work at the Swindon railway works as a labourer. His brother already lived in another part of Swindon. We left Swindon when I was 15 to go back to Wales, where my father was employed as a forestry worker.
My father always loved the outdoors and had an allotment in Rodbourne near the recreation grounds. He also kept chickens at the end of our garden!
Occasionally my mother, Beryl Pembridge, used to work in a grocery store owned by the Wise family that was located at the end of Jennings street on Rodbourne Road. She also did some cleaning for Mrs. Wise and one of her daughters, ” Mrs Porter”, who also lived in Rodbourne.
My family attended the Baptist Chapel- Calvaria(?) that was around the corner, and under the bridge from Even Swindon Primary School. I remember harvest festivals at the Chapel when my Father would take wheel barrow loads of his garden produce as a donation to the event.
My father’s mother, Margaret (Maggie) Ann Pembridge, lived with us. She was bilingual- Welsh and English speaking.
I still have relatives (my Uncle’s children/grand children) in the Swindon area and my mother is still alive – in Bridgend, South Wales.
I went to Tonyrefail Grammar School in the Rhondda after Headlands and then Barry Teacher’s Training College. I taught in London and Singapore, before I married my husband, another teacher, and we emigrated to Canada in 1969. I went to University in Canada, and held a number of positions in the not- for profit sector, including acting as a Policy Analyst for the Red Cross, and an Executive Director of a Home Care agency. I am now retired and live by Lake Erie in Ontario. I have two daughters and three grand daughters.
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