Pearl & Joe Weekes

Born in 1922, Pearl was the youngest of 8 children.

Pearl and Joe met in 1936 on a blind date outside the former Pickles shop in Ferndale Road when Joe was 16 and Pearl was 14. Joe reported being over the moon when he met Pearl and immediately thought “Yes, she’s the one for me. We just got on so well and had the same temperament. I knew we belonged together.” Over the next four years the love-struck couple strolled hand in hand on walks and chatted on bike rides.

They married in 1940 at St Mary’s church, Rodbourne Cheney. At the time, Joe had followed in his father’s footsteps and was working as an apprentice boiler maker in the Great Western railway works and Pearl as a nurse at the railway hospital.

After spending their one-week honeymoon in St Ives the couple moved into 111 Bruce Street, Swindon. It is known that Pearl, along with her first child, Glenice, moved back in with her Mum and sister-in-law Flo (Ernie’s wife) at the family home 6 Iffley Road during the war, presumably after Joe had been called up to serve in the Royal Navy.

During the Second World War Joe was stationed at Davenport where he was chief petty officer in the Royal Navy, while Pearl worked in a tobacco factory in Swindon. It is believed that Joe was probably involved in the D-Day landings on one of the ships shelling the coast.

During the next 25 years the couple lived at several addresses in Swindon including Church Walk South, Church Walk North, a bungalow in Moredon and ‘Tall Trees’ house on Purton Road. For a while the couple relocated to St Ives where they ran a guest house. Joe remembered that Cornwall as “a beautiful county in which we made many, many friends and built up countless fond memories.” Pearl’s older sister, Nance, and Joe’s sister Eileen also moved to nearby Penzance around the same time.

Joe and Pearl’s final home was in Purton Road, Swindon where they lived with their pride and joy pet parrot, Charlie and their Yorkshire Terrier, Sophie. It was at this house that they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 2000.

Pearl and Joe both passed away in 2004.