Bradley Stoke’s platinum couple

One of the first couples to move to Bradley Stoke celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary this month. 

Joan and Peter James tied the knot on 1 October 1955 when they were only 19 and 20 years old and, seven decades later, on the eve of their platinum wedding anniversary, they are just as happy as they’ve ever been. 

The couple met at a ballroom dancing class in Torquay in 1951. Asked what it was about Joan that caught his eye, Peter says: “Well, she was lovely. She still is lovely. We’re not a lovey-dovey couple but every so often we look at each other and say, ‘Love you’. It’s as simple as that.”

Joan adds: “Our wedding day was a nice, sunny day and we had all the family there. My uncle, who was a bus driver, hired a coach and brought them all down from Hampshire.”

Before long, the couple were parents to Sarah, Nina, Nigel and Colin. Now, they also have nine grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Every summer, Joan and Peter host a big family party at their Bradley Stoke home. “This year, 35 of them came,” says Peter proudly. “Sarah does the salads, Nina does the sweets, Colin does the main courses, Nigel helps with all the setting up and I supervise.”

Initially, the couple stayed in Torquay and Peter worked in telecommunications, first for the General Post Office (GPO) and then for British Telecoms (BT). 

The family went to Nigeria for four years with Peter’s work. Initially he went on his own and then Joan, who had never flown before, packed up their four young children and travelled to Lagos to join him. This
was during the Biafra Civil War in the late-1960s, an extraordinary time to be in West Africa. 

When they returned to the UK in 1972, they moved to Bristol and lived in Redland. Peter stayed at BT as a manager until he took retirement in 1992, at which point he became a consultant. This role saw him carry on
travelling, going to Prague and Tanzania. “Joan joined me, of course,” he says. “She went on all these madcap travels. She’s been amazing. She never said ‘no’ to anything.”

Joan also had her own career. She worked as a shorthand typist and did secretarial work. She even joined BT eventually, working as a secretary to one of the managers. 

At the end of the 1980s, the couple moved to the then-new town of Bradley Stoke buying a four-bedroom house in a development off Baileys Court Road, where they’ve lived for 36 years. 

Having lived in a Redland 1930s’ semi that needed a lot of
maintenance, a new-build house was very appealing. “I suddenly realised I could buy this house and it was brand new and would not need much doing for a very long time,” says Peter. “But Bradley Stoke then wasn’t much. The spine road that goes up to the motorway wasn’t built and Bradley Stoke North and South weren’t connected. The two main roads that now join them together were just being built. When we walked from our house to Baileys Court Inn, we walked across a field that was just a big mud pit.”

Despite the fact that Joan and Peter’s house went down £10,000 the day they bought it due to negative equity, they’ve always felt the term ‘Sadly Broke’ was a very unfair name for the town – , they would rather people refer to it as ‘Bradley Bespoke’ such is their love for the area.

During their retirement, the couple keep busy. Joan enjoys cross-stitching and is a member of a craft group. Peter enjoys making videos of their travels, as well as restoring electromechanical clocks from the old telephone exchanges.

He has also written two books. One is a volume of poems, and the other is an autobiography called The Chronicles of a Telephone Chappie. “It describes what it was like to be a wartime kid, which had a huge impression on us,” says Peter. “It describes an apprenticeship with the old GPO and there’s quite a big chapter on National Service with the RAF. There’s a chapter on life in the 1960s and there’s a big chapter on Nigeria. That was a tremendous adventure.” 

The big question is what is the secret to such a long and happy marriage? Joan and Peter both say sharing.

“We started off with nothing 

and we’ve just gone year by year,” says Joan. “We’ve taken every opportunity that was put our way and we’ve done well. We’ve had a really good, lucky life. I can’t believe it’s been 70 years. You might look older on the outside but you’re the same on the inside. We wouldn’t change a thing.”

Peter agrees: “We’ve had an absolutely amazing life. We started off with the square root of nothing. Which isn’t very much. But we’ve always shared. We’ve never had secrets and we also respect each other’s space.”