Celia Pemberton’s 100th Birthday
Well-known local resident Celia Pemberton turned 100 on 5th October.
Celia has three children (all in their 70s!), eight grandchildren and ten great grandchildren – and counting!
Described as a ‘legend’ by her grandchildren she is very much a matriarchal figure in her family and is much loved by all.
It is easy to understand why. She has a great sense of humour (usually laughing at her own jokes and therefore failing to finish them!); she is interested and interesting; widely read (attributing her love of books and poetry to having been read to as a child); widely travelled and always immaculately turned out. Above all she has embraced modern technology and is in touch on her phone and iPad. She is thoroughly connected.
An excellent cook, she still maintains the wartime principle of no waste and some of her best leftover recipes such as ‘green spags’ appear on family tables regularly. She’ll never leave lights on once she’s left a room.
She always says that she brought her children up on ‘rubbish and love’. If someone has done well they are heaped with praise, and if they haven’t done so well, they are still heaped with praise! Potential partners always had to be brought to meet Granny first.
Celia’s childhood
Celia was born at her grandparents’ house in Edinburgh. Her family were living in Marrakech, Morocco at the time, and her mother came back to Scotland for the birth. Her father was a banker. For the first eleven years of her life, Celia lived in Morocco and was schooled by a Governess. She remembers Morocco with great affection.
At the age of nine, nearly ten, she was sent to boarding school in England to Queen Bertha’s School in Birchington, Kent. It involved travelling accompanied with her brother by ship from Tangier. She found boarding school rather a shock. She hated the cold and hated games! She only went home to Morocco in the summer holidays, spending the first Christmas and Easter holidays in Bath with her maternal grandmother where she was thoroughly spoiled. That stopped when her grandmother died in October 1935. Celia was 11 at the time. Celia left Queen Bertha’s at the age of fourteen, by which time the family had relocated to Sussex. She was sent to Moira House in Eastbourne in September 1939. War had broken out on 3rd September. The school evacuated to Thurlestone in Devon for the summer term of 1940.
Celia can remember the summer holidays of 1940 vividly as the Battle of Britain was fought in the air over Sussex and Kent, and sometimes over their house. She and her brother even had a masterplan of what to do if a German pilot was shot down on their land. It went something like picking up an old sword and saying, “I arrest you in the name of the King”!
The school then evacuated again in September 1940, this time further north to the Ferry Hotel in Windermere. Again, Celia hated the cold but nevertheless enjoyed her time there although they were totally cut off so no half term or visiting Sundays! She left Moira House and Windermere in early 1943 and spent six months at Trubwick Domestic Science School in Haywards Heath where she said they had “a wonderful time and were very naughty”. The school is long gone.
Celia joined the Wrens
Sadly her father died in August 1943. At Christmas 1943, aged just nineteen Celia joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), known as the Wrens. Initial service was at Lee-on-Solent, near Portsmouth, where she was a messenger (“I just made the tea really”) in the Naval Air Staff.
She then got posted to the Orkneys as a Photographic Wren at the Royal Naval Air Station at Twatt, HMS Tern. Readers of the Chronicle may perhaps be aware of her service there as it was featured in an article a few years ago. By all accounts, her time in the Orkneys in the WRNS was one of the defining periods of her life (the first being Morocco). Although there was a war on – or perhaps because there was a war on – she had a great time and was part of a set up with amazing team spirit and camaraderie. They worked hard and played hard. Celia was in the Photographic Section not far from the Control Tower. “A humble Wren” she called herself although her grandchildren say that she won the war single-handed! She made many lifelong friends. Little did she know then that twenty-eight years later a son of her’s would land a Navy helicopter by the Control Tower of the now disused airfield!
On being demobbed, Celia went back to Sussex for a while and then enrolled at the Paris Academy in Bond Street, London on a dressmaking course. She shared a bedsit in Manson Place, South Kensington, with her friend Judy Lyttleton.
She completed the course and was about to do a “dreary sewing job” when she met Eric Pemberton at a party. Apparently she didn’t really want to go to the party, but was persuaded to do so by Judy. Eric was a decorated wartime army officer and a London solicitor.
They were married on 9th October 1948 at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge. They set up home in Sussex Gardens in London and thereafter in Primrose Hill. In 1957 they bought a house near Sandwich in Kent close to Royal St George’s Golf Club where Eric became Captain in 1963. Celia was a brilliant hostess and friends there included the writer Ian Fleming and the cricket correspondent EW Swanton who dedicated a book to daughter Juliet. It was a very happy time for all the family.
Tragedy struck in 1975 when Eric died of cancer aged only 59.
Celia sold the Kent house fairly quickly after his death and removed to Primrose Hill permanently. There the first grandchildren greatly enjoyed playing in the garden.
She travelled quite extensively in the first years after Eric’s death with a variety of friends. During this time she was also doing voluntary work looking after old people as a Branch Secretary for the Royal United Kingdom Beneficent Association (RUKBA). Later she was asked to join the Committee. She continued the work for over 40 years, never taking a penny in expenses. Sometimes her ‘old people’ were younger than her! As a member of the Committee she met all sorts of interesting people including the Queen Mother.
Celia had three Scottish ancestors at the Battle of Waterloo and in 2014 she travelled to the battlefield for a guided tour. In 2015 she was honoured to be invited to St Paul’s Cathedral for the Waterloo 200 celebrations. She was also a guest of honour at Fort George in Inverness for the Highland Military Tattoo.
A wonderful correspondent who has kept a daily diary and an annual photo album since she was eighteen, she maintained a wide circle of friends, entertaining and socialising. Over time, Celia decided to downsize to a flat in Parliament Hill, Hampstead. She liked her flat, but although it was close to Hampstead Heath it was a bit of a hike to the shops and public transport. She had also given up driving (or been told to do so by the grandchildren!). The decision was made in 2006 to move closer to daughter Juliet and thus her connection with Kibworth Beauchamp began! She has never looked back.
Celia has made a wide circle of friends in the village who have all been so kind to her. She values these friendships greatly. She is a member of the Methodist Church, attends and sometimes hosts the u3a Poetry Group and she used to do Register of U3A (University of the Third Age).
What are the secrets of her long life? The company and love of friends and family will be right at the top of the list.
In the time of Celia
There have been: twenty-four Prime ministers, five changes of monarchy and the following:
- 1926 General Strike
- 1928 Women get the right to vote
- 1934 The Flying Scotsman tops 100mph
- 1936 Jarrow March
- 1937 999 world’s first emergency telephone number
- 1939 WORLD WAR II begins
- 1945 United Nations is founded
- 1948 British Rail established
- 1948 NHS founded
- 1948 London Summer Olympics
- 1953 DNA – Watson and Crick
- 1954 Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile
- 1956 First Nuclear Power Station
- 1963 The Beatles era begins
- 1965 Death penalty abolished
- 1967 Abortion Act is passed
- 1969 Concorde takes first flight
- 1971 Decimal day in UK
- 1973 European Communities created
- 1978 First test tube baby, Louise Brown
- 1982 Falklands War
- 1984 Miners Strike begins
- 1989 Tim Berners-Lee – World Wide Web
- 1991 Helen Sharman first British astronaut
- 1994 Channel Tunnel opens
- 1996 Dolly the sheep is born
- 1999 Good Friday Agreement signed
- 1999 Millennium Dome and London Eye
- 2012 London Olympics Games, third time!
- 2013 Same-sex marriage is legalised
- 2020 UK leaves EU
Kit Pemberton
The Vicar of Slawston and Cranoe
