Keighley couple Ken and Elsie Wilson celebrate their golden wedding anniversary today - and they still have the receipt for their reception.

The bill for 31 guests at Keighley Temperance Hall was £17 7s. Caterers W Day gave a £1 discount for cash! The charge per head was 5s, wine was 1s, the cake £7 and the charge for the room was £1 1s.

With rationing still in place the Wilsons remember that family and friends saved coupons to help provide the meal. And the bride married in a borrowed dress.

Cash was tight but the couple received the red carpet treatment at Keighley Parish Church where their marriage was on the same day as a society wedding. The church was decorated with expensive flowers and Mr Wilson jokes that people mistakenly thought his bride was marrying into money!

The couple met during the 1939-45 war while serving in the Air Raid Protection group. By day Mr Wilson was an engineer helping produce diesel engines at H Widdop, of Marriner Road, Keighley.

Mrs Wilson had moved from Doncaster to Keighley at the age of 14 to work at Timothy Hird's textile mill in South Street. She asked him to hold her hair pins during gas mask practice as a new ARP recruit.

She was just 16. The couple became engaged two years later and married when she was 21. Mrs Wilson had worked as a waitress at Harry Ramsden's fish and chip cafe in High Street in the evenings while working in textiles by day. Later she moved to Driver's cafe, in Lawkholme Crescent.

Mr Wilson worked at various engineering companies in Keighley, including Frank Watson, British Industrial Designers and Keighley Lifts.

The couple decided to move to Africa after doctors advised that Mrs Wilson have complete rest following a cerebral haemorrhage. Their home included four servants. During their 20 years abroad Mr Wilson built and maintained engines for private companies and governments in Nigeria and Ghana.

their son Raymond stayed with his grandparents to be educated locally before the couple returned to Keighley in 1981. Although officially retired, Mr Wilson soon joined Timothy Taylor's brewery business with which he stayed for seven years.

The Wilsons now live in the Fell Lane area over the winter and spend summers at their mobile home in Northum-berland.

The couple, who have two granddaughters and two great grandchildren, enjoyed a Chinese banquet last week to celebrate their anniversary.

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