30
Jun
A century in Yorkshire: Wetherby couple celebrate joint 100th birthday
'100 years ago' has become a catch-all phrase to refer to something that happened in the past, but it's rarely an accurate description.
Yet for one Wetherby couple, this phrase is factual rather than frivolous.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) estimates the number of centenarians has more than doubled since 2002, with an estimated 15,120 living in England and Wales in 2022.
That doesn’t mean to say that reaching the anniversary isn’t still a milestone worth celebrating.
Yorkshire born and bred, Arnold and Rita Bradbury recently celebrated their joint 100th birthday at Wetherby Manor Care Home, where they’ve both lived since 2015.
On May 31, four generations of the Bradbury family gathered in the care home’s function room to raise a glass to the couple, who will also celebrate their 76th wedding anniversary this year.
Their son Peter Bradbury called the occasion a ‘very special day’.
He said:
It’s quite the milestone – I don’t think there can be many people who can claim to have reached 100 years of age, yet alone a couple.
Early life and military service
Arnold heralds from a family lineage of Yorkshire butchers – his great-grandfather Joseph Bradbury established J. Bradbury & Sons, which started trading in 1919 on Dewsbury Road, Leeds.
A second shop opened on Great George Street two years later, and a third in 1925 near Hyde Park. This pattern of success continued for the franchise, until the family business had created 21 shops in the Leeds and Bradford area by the 1950s.
Associated Dairies - now Asda - then bought up the business in the 1960s, and Arnold worked for the organisation as an accountant until his retirement.
Both Arnold and Rita played their part in World War Two. Prior to meeting one another, Arnold was posted to Southern India with the Navy, where he worked as a radio mechanic for the Fleet Air Arm.
Rita was part of the Women's Royal Naval Service, otherwise known as the Wrens, and helped with the war effort in Grimsby and Windsor.
When the pair met, it was this mutual experience of active service that prompted Arnold to ask Rita out for dinner. Although he joked that she was only ‘in it for a free meal’, they clearly hit it off, as the second date was a weekend break in Jersey.
Arnold said:
We had a very nice time, although it was the wrong time of the year to go – it wasn’t very warm.
Several of us [from the Navy] had our yearly allowance to use, so I invited Rita to come. She had to ask her dad permission to take the trip, but he agreed, so off we went.
(L) Rita and Arnold today (R) On their wedding day
76 years of marriage
In 1948 they were married in St John’s Church, Leeds and later had two sons, Peter and Michael.
Rita and Arnold both share a mutual love for gardening and golf, the latter which they regularly played at their timeshare in Spain.
Arnold said:
My lowest handicap was 15 – I didn’t say I was any good at golf, but we both liked it.
I used to do a lot of gardening too, but I can’t get about as much now.
The couple moved to Wetherby Manor Care Home in 2015, first to a serviced apartment, and later into the main assisted living building.
They now have two sons, five grandchildren and four great grandchildren, and have rarely spent the past 76 years apart.
Arnold is proud that he and his wife are the ‘first couple that Wetherby Manor have looked after to reach 100’.
Aside from Arnold's three years served in India, they've both spent the last century living in Yorkshire, through a world war, a cold war, the turn of a millenium, and countless significant cultural events.
Speaking about whether he possessed the special brand of patriotism for his home county that so many Yorkshire residents claim, Arnold added:
Do I like Yorkshire? Well yes. It’s home - I’ve never known anything else.
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