ROMANCE AFOOT

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 300, 15 September 1936, Page 4

ROMANCE AFOOT

Heiress and Fisherman

8000-MILE WEDDING TRIP

"Dominion" Special Service.—By Air Mall.

(By

Fenella.)

London, August 19. A Lonely island off the Welsh coast Ims been the setting of a courtship as romantic as its scenery. The wealthy 25-year-old owner of the island, Miss Lena Pearson, it is now revealed, has married the 29-year-old fisherman who Ims acted as her boatman, chauffeur, and electrician for the past three years. The island, which is called Thorne, is 10 miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire. A ruined fort crowned its suminit when Miss Pearson, granddaughter of the late Admiral Sir H; F. Woods, first saw the island, three years ago. She was enchanted with its beauty and bought the island from the Government, shortly afterward converting the fort into a palatial house. The fisherman, whose name is Sydney James Hicks, she engaged to pilot her fleet of motor-boats across the treacherous stretch of water to the mainland. , • Every summer Miss Pearson lived On the island, entertaining liberally at her home. During the winter, she stayed at her parents’ home, Baynton Hail, East Coulston, Wiltshire. Gradually a warm friendship, ripening into love, grew up between the fisherman and the heiress. Now they have been married, by special licence, at Monkton Priory Church, Pembroke. The bride’s father and brother were present.

After the ceremony, which was very quiet, the fisherman and his bride went back to their beloved island for their honeymoon.

8000 Miles to Marry.

As romantic as the Thorne Island wedding are the stories of these two young English girls—Miss Olive Carey, Bristol, and Miss Olive Hunt, Hounslow, Middlesex. They both left Southampton this week on an 8000-mile journey to become brides of two English colonists in one of the most isolated parts of the Argentine jungle. Miss Carey’s husband-to-be is Mr. Kenneth Strugnell, a Bristol man, who left England nearly four years ago with little more than a kit of carpenter’s tools and who has since built up a prosperous business among the settlers in Victoria, a growing British colony on the Upper Parana River, Argentine. Beside building houses for incoming settlers, he now owns an orange plantation.

He has built for his bride a six-foom-ed house from trees which he has hewn by his own hand. The young couple met when they were associated with the Y.M.C.A. at Bristol. Miss Carey was a school teacher. Miss Hunt, the second bride, is to marry Mr. John Hawkings, who owns an orange and grape-fruit plantation not far from that owned by Mr. Strugnell. Mr. Hawkings and Miss Hunt met when they were working at the same West End store in London. He migrated to the Argentine about four years ago. The two girls met for the first time when boarding the steamer for the Argentine. When they are married they will be very near neighbours, and will no doubt see a great deal of each other as their fiances are close friends.