Cliff, who grew up in Brigg and was educated at the Grammar School, is a member of the Turner family well-known in the area for its butcher's business.
Cliff and Nancy - pictured above on their big day, October 9, 1951 - now live in New Zealand.
We have been serialising Cliff's life story on Brigg Blog for many weeks and have held back his memories of October 9, 1951 to use today....
BY CLIFF TURNER
Nancy had a break from school early in October so we fixed 9 October, a Tuesday, as the big day and we had the banns of marriage called on three successive Sundays at St Columba's church in Liverpool and St John's Church in Brigg.
Neither of us wanted a big wedding and in the event Nancy's father was not well enough to travel to Liverpool to give away his daughter to a man he had only seen for a weekend.
Father and stepmother travelled to Liverpool with me on the previous day; Nancy's cousin Jenny had arranged for them to have bed and breakfast with a nearby friend and I stayed with another cousin, Hughie, and his wife, Phyllis. Hughie was to be best man and, in the absence of Nancy's father, Jenny's husband Stan was to give the bride away. Cousin Jenny was to be Nancy's attendant. Nancy's mother also arrived on the Monday and stayed with Jenny. Nancy's brother Bill stayed at home to look after his Dad.
Father and stepmother seemed to hit it off well with Jenny and Stan and Hughie and Phyllis and enjoyed a convivial evening and were soon on first-name terms while Nancy and I took a walk in a nearby park. Then, for me it was off to Hughie's house for my last night as a single man. Soon after I had breakfast in the morning I heard an appropriate song on the radio, "O Happy, Happy Wedding Day" from the operetta The Chocolate Soldier, and that is exactly what followed.
Later in the morning I was waiting at the altar; when Nancy arrived she looked lovely in a brown suit and a blue feathered hat. She put her hand in mine and I found she was trembling. We had a very simple service and exchanged the vows that we have kept, at time of writing, for more than sixty years. A photographer had been engaged but we did not have the elaborate series of photographs that seem to be de rigeur nowadays. The only people present were the relatives I have already mentioned plus Jenny's daughter Pamela who gave the bride a lucky horse shoe. One or two of Nancy's teaching colleagues were waiting to see us come from the church.
Stan worked in the kitchens of Liverpool's premier hotel, The Adelphi, and had contrived to put on a very good lunch for the whole party at his and Jenny's house and had also organised the wedding cake.
The photographer came to take a picture of us cutting the cake (SEE ABOVE).
I cannot remember whether or not I thanked Jenny and Stan properly for doing so well for us but I do know that many years later during one of our trips to England we called on them and we made a point of telling them how much we had appreciated their efforts.
After lunch, Hughie took us in his car to catch the train for Llandudno where we had accommodation booked in a hotel. Now I can recall neither the name nor the precise location of the hotel. In the late afternoon we walked up the prominence known as the Great Orme. I think we must have seen seagulls because whenever I hear the song “This is my lovely day” from the show “Bless the Bride”, which mentions “seagulls crying”, I am immediately transported to the Great Orme.
The following day we made the bus trip to Bangor for the day so that Dad could see his newly-married daughter. Looking back, and with the advantage of being the father of daughters, I can well imagine that Nancy's parents could justifiably have had a few reservations about a man who had known their daughter for only 10 months and during that time had been to Japan and back by sea. Dad died in 1955 but I am happy to believe that by then he was quite satisfied about the choice Nancy had made. During our visit Mam surreptitiously gave me an envelope addressed to Nancy which I was to post without Nancy knowing. Somehow I managed to do that and so Nancy received a card at the hotel for her 22nd birthday, three days after the wedding.
I think we had three nights at the hotel and then stayed with Mam and Dad until returning to Liverpool on the Sunday.
Nancy had to finish the term at her school so I returned to Brigg from the honeymoon by myself; until the term ended Nancy travelled to Brigg on alternate weekends, arriving on Friday evenings and leaving early on Sunday evenings.
At Christmas, Nancy went to Bangor where I joined her for a few days and then we returned to Brigg.
I had arranged to rent furnished rooms in Ashby Road, Scunthorpe, so after a day or two in Brigg we went there. We were not very happy with our accommodation and soon moved to rooms behind a fish and chip shop in Digby Street.
The fish and chips were delicious; a speciality was a haddock for ten pence, which we often had for supper.
Our landlady, Mrs Starkey, used to ask Nancy to make Yorkshire puddings for her on the grounds that Nancy produced a better result.
After Easter, Nancy started work at Priory Lane Infants School. During the Easter holiday weekend we had been to Bangor and we brought Nancy's bike back with us so that she was able to cycle to school. The bike was very old so she soon bought a new one. We did a lot of cycling around Scunthorpe and when the evenings became lighter we sometimes went to Brigg, a distance of about eight miles.
I had never learned to dance but Nancy loved it so to give her a surprise I announced that we would go to Campbell's dancing school; this was an institution in Scunthorpe and many married couples in the town had first found romance under the eagle eye of Pop Campbell.
There must have been at least forty people attending the weekly lesson; it cost two shillings each. I was never going to be a Fred Astaire but eventually could do a passable imitation of the waltz and quickstep. In mid-1952 I took the exams for the National Certificate with good results.
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| Cliff & Nancy in retirement in New Zealand
MORE MEMORIES FROM CLIFF TO COME ON BRIGG BLOG, AS WE CONTINUE HIS STORY
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