The context for this wedding is that it occurred during the darkest days of World War Two, a time of unremitting hardship and sacrifice for the country. France had fallen, a nonaggression pact existed between Germany and Russia, and America had yet to enter the war. Despite these challenges, people came together for family celebrations.

In the Spring or early Summer of 1941, Hilda Hann, a laboratory assistant living at Rydons, Hardington, married Frederick Denner of Yeovil.

Hilda lived at Rydons with her mother, Evelyn, her stepfather, Robert Marsh, and her two sisters, Kathleen and Joyce. A few months earlier, another sister, Betty, had married Henry Walter Grinter.

Evelyn’s brother, George Henry Parsons Hann and his wife, Mary, owned Landground Farm.

The people in the picture are, from left to right:

Margaret Love

Fred’s Mother

Kathleen Rendell

Percy Hann

Fred Denner

Hilda Denner

Robert Marsh

Joyce Rendell

Sylvia Mary Marsh

Mrs Evelyn Marsh

Percy Hann trained as an RAF pilot in Canada and then joined the Inland Revenue, becoming a district tax inspector. In 1949, he married Lilian Anne Ascott, the granddaughter of William White, who kept the village Post Office until he died in 1939.

Betty Grinter had two sons: Robert, who became the head of the IT Department at Westlands, and Peter, who was a very keen Yeovil Town supporter.

I am grateful to Joy Mitchell, the daughter of Kathleen Board (nee Rendell), for sharing this photograph and permitting me to use it.