GOLDEN wedding couple Nigel and Joy Kerton have no beef with their local butchers shop Sumbler’s in Marlborough after staff there kept a promise made 50 years ago following the pair’s nuptials.

The new Mr and Mrs Kerton had gone to the shop to buy their first ever joint of meat and chose a stuffed breast of lamb that cost them just 1s6d - or seven and a half pence in decimal currency.

On hearing they had married just two days previously and were taking their honeymoon later in the year the shop owner, the late Percy Sumbler, quipped: “If you are still together in 50 years time you can have another joint for the same money.”

Mr Kerton, 72, who was brought up in Lyneham, was the Gazette journalist in Marlborough over a period of almost 50 years. He said this week after the shop honoured its promise: “We have regularly shopped at Sumbler’s and I have occasionally joked with the staff about their promise.”

Mr Sumbler’s son, John, who is now retired but still owns the business, returned to the shop on Tuesday to personally carry out his late dad’s promise.

Shop manager Steve Frost cut a similar joint of stuffed lamb breast but declined Mr and Mrs Kerton’s offer to pay with three old-fashioned sixpenny pieces. The couple also offered to pay with a £1 note from the 1960’s but that was also turned down.

Asked what the secret was for a long and happy marriage Mrs Kerton, who was born and brought up in Bushton near Royal Wootton Bassett, said: “The secret is to have an argument every day and then make up.”

Her husband said: “We might argue almost every day but I suspect most couples do. Those who say the secret of a long marriage is never to argue must have a very boring life.”

The pair met when Mrs Kerton went to work for the village shop in Lyneham in the mid-1960’s, when it was run by her future parents-in-law.

Mrs Kerton, 70, who formerly played hockey for Wiltshire and for Royal Wootton Bassett, was a chef for much of her working life, and said she would be turning the lamb joint into a roast dinner with a selection of vegetables.

The pair, who were married at Clyffe Pypard, have lived in St Margarets Mead for 50 years, where on Saturday they celebrated with a party attended by about 50 friends and neighbours together with their two children, Paul Kerton and Claire Ellis, and their four grandchildren Nathan, Evie, Tom and Vicky.

Mr Kerton said he had kept his vow not to carry on writing after retiring from the Gazette on his 65th birthday, and joked: “All I write nowadays is the Christmas cards!”

The couple spend as much time as they can away from home in their camper van and caravan.