A memory in the life of… Sylvia Keen

Sylvia Keen a 75-year-old woman moved house at the age of three and remembers it to this day.

Retired Sylvia recalls her mother “kneeling down, face to face, with a sympathetic look in her eyes” telling her they were moving house.

“It was a chaotic day and I remember it to this very moment, there were boxes everywhere.”

The move came as a shock to Sylvia. “My father had little money, he worked in the metropolitan police and we could not afford much. We were living with my grandparents.”

The vulnerable girl of three was uprooted from Greenwich the place she had known as home, ripped away from her grandparents to settle in Welling due to her grandmother’s endowment of £25. This generous amount of money allowed Mrs Keen's parents to secure a house of their own.

“It’s a lot different from now a days you see, the whole house cost £450, you could have several houses for that money now."

Sweet - hearted Sylvia laughs at what she has just proposed, but it becomes clear she is reminiscing on her earlier years.

“I lived in that house for a long time, I even got married there when I was 25.” With a glint in her eyes and a warm smile she moves closer to her husband sitting next to her on the wall. Sylvia’s love for her husband for over 40 years is as cherished as her earliest memory.