February 14, 2014, by Malvika Johal

Falling in love at Nottingham…

As we celebrate Valentine’s day today, I got to thinking about the  couples who found love while studying here. As well as gaining a world class degree many also found their partners for life….

Like Pat and Dickie Bond from Devon who met at the University ‘hop’ in Christmas 1954. They were never an item but had their photograph taken together outside the Great Hall. Carnival Director Dick graduated in Economics in 1956 and Pat, a hockey player and athletics star, a year later with a Maths degree. Both went their separate ways.

Dick went on to do National Service in the Royal Army Pay Corps and later got a job with IBM. Pat married, moved to Birmingham, had three children, adopted another and returned to full-time work in Adult Education later working overseas.

Half a century later and with lives lived to the full, the couple found themselves single. Dick, now retired traced Pat through Friends Reunited and the couple met up again taking two trips abroad before agreeing to become man and wife.

In August 2010, they returned to Nottingham, where it had all begun, for a registry office wedding and a trip back to the Great Hall at the University for a ‘repeat photo’.

And Paul and Yvonne Taylor who met on the platform of Beeston railway station while waiting for a train to take them home from the University for the Christmas holidays. Although they’d both living in Ancaster Hall all term they’d never met before. A friend of Yvonne’s introduced them; they sat next to each other on the train and became inseparable the following term back at the University. They graduated in the summer of 1978 and got married in the same year.

“We enjoyed every minute of our time in hall and have many happy memories of our time there,” said Yvonne. “We have now been happily married for 32 years; we have three children and four grandchildren. The University of Nottingham played a very special part in our lives.

Perhaps you also found love while studying here, get in touch and tell us your story. Here are a few pictures of the happy couples who met here at Nottingham.

 

Posted in Alumni RelationsRemembering Nottingham