News and events

Friends united

Published 17 August 2010

Four graduates who met when they shared university digs in Brighton are this year celebrating 45 years of friendship.

They have been meeting every year for anniversaries and have seen their lives expand – all four women attended each other's weddings and between them they now have nine children and 11 grandchildren.

The pharmacy graduates said they owed it all to meeting at the University of Brighton. Two of their husbands are also Brighton alumni and one, Peter Hall, explained the enduring friendship.

He said: "We all just got on really well together at university all those years ago. The four girls just happened to meet when they found themselves in the same digs in Preston Drove in their first year.

"The bond is particularly strong between the girls – maybe it's because girls keep in touch better than boys do.

"We all went to each other's weddings and when we started having children we met up once a year for picnics when all the children could play together.

"Today when we meet up it's to go to the theatre or restaurant for meals. The bond the girls formed as undergraduates has remained with them ever since and they and us husbands regularly meet to catch up."

Left to right: Gordon Edwards, Barbara Stancliffe, Peter Hall, Elizabeth Edwards, Patrick Stancliffe, Gill Hall, Alan Welchman, Felicity Welchman.

The friends last met in June to celebrate 40 years of marriage for each couple.
Elizabeth Edwards (nee Oakley), Gill Hall (nee Toon), Barbara Stancliffe (nee Reavil) and Felicity Welchman (nee Owens) first met in 1964 as freshers on a pharmacy degree.

They studied at what was then the Brighton College of Technology and is now part of the university.

Gill’s husband Peter was amongst the pilot cohort that completed the university's first computing degree and Elizabeth's husband Gordon was a pharmacy graduate.

Sam Davies, the university's director of Development and Alumni, said: "We only found out about the long-standing friendship by chance – it is a charming story but there are, no doubt, many other Brighton alumni out there who keep in touch and many more who wish they could reconnect."

The four couples hope to meet next at a Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) reunion organised by the Brighton Graduate Association on 11 September at the university's Cockcroft Building in Lewes Road, Brighton.

For more information go to the Brighton Graduate Association website.