A HEREFORDSHIRE couple have celebrated a milestone anniversary this month.

Dr Noel and Dr Angela Meeke marked 60 years of marriage as they celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary on August 10.

Noel was born in Staffordshire, while Angela came from Bedfordshire originally. Both families moved to Devon and they both were pupils at Colyton Grammar School.

Noel went on to study electronic engineering and physics at the University of Wales, Bangor, whilst Angela studied medicine at the University of Liverpool. Not all that far apart, they endeavoured to visit each other alternately at weekends.

The couple married on August 10 at Seaton Parish Church, before taking up their first posts at Clatterbridge Hospital on the Wirral where Angela did her first house post in general medicine and geriatrics, while Noel was employed as a physicist in the radiotherapy department.

After this, they lived for a number of years in north Wales where Angela became a GP in the small town of Bethesda. Noel still pursued his endeavours in electronics applied to medicine and became a director of a research firm in Llangefni, Anglesey.

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They moved to Gloucestershire for family reasons, where Angela became a specialist in child health care in the community and Noel took a post as lecturer in electronics at the Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology.

They bought a property in Marstow, south Herefordshire, to get away from the telephone at weekends, and have lived there ever since.

The couple have three children and nine grandchildren aged from nine to 35, and have recently welcomed a great-granddaughter.

In retirement, keen gardener Angela has been singing with several choral societies and is currently to be found in Ross Choral and Monmouth Choral. 

Until osteoarthritis took its toll, Noel was for a quarter of a century a trustee of the Waterworks Museum in Hereford and chairman for most of that time. His main hobby was and still is, to a limited extent, photography.

Once a year they gather the whole extended family together for a few days and have an excellent time reminiscing and listening to all the wonderful things the grandchildren are doing and dreaming of.