A West Ayton couple have celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary

Keith Taylor married Elspeth Linklater at Queen Street Methodist Church in Scarborough on June 17 1961.

The couple met when Keith was working on the counter at the General Post Office on the South Cliff. Elspeth was working next door in Barclays Bank and regularly came into the post office to do banking transactions.

The couple went to see Cy Grant at the Floral Hall and had a drink at the Old Pavilion Hotel in the cocktail bar. The evening could perhaps have gone better. Keith certainly made an impression as he spilled a glass of Dubonnet on his date’s dress.

Elspeth, who was born in Hemingford Grey in Cambridgeshire, must have been quick to forgive him though, as it wasn’t long before Keith popped the question and the couple were wed.

They spent their honeymoon in the Channel Islands.

The couple went on to have two daughters, Rachel and Emma, and seven grandchildren.

Keith, 83, spent much of his working life as a personal banking manager at Lloyds Bank. He said of Elspeth: “She’s been a great support over the years. I’ve spent 27 years as a magistrate and she’s been doing things for me when she ought to be out enjoying herself.”

A marriage bar meant that Elspeth had to resign her position at Barclays when she married Keith, but she went on to work at a stockbrokers, before becoming the bursar’s secretary at Hunmanby Hall School and later working in the fabric shop opposite the town hall.

Like many professions, banking was once seen as something of a boys’ club. But two world wars meant the financial sector had little choice but to open its doors to women.

The 1950s saw the appointment of the UK’s first female branch manager, Hilda Harding, in 1958. But when Elspeth married Keith she still had no choice but to resign her role.

The abolotion of the marriage bar came in 1962 and the bank actively recruited female employees for the first time.

Of their marriage, Elspeth said: “I don’t regret anything we’ve done for the last 60 years, we have nice things, we’ve had fun, our two girls are good mums and we have good grandchildren.”

The couple are planning a large celebration at The Farrier at Cayton at the end of July when it is hoped the whole family can be there.