A PAIR of students who had not seen each other for 65 years had a heart-warming but surprising reunion.

Denzil Bury, known as Jock, got in touch with the BBC’s The One Show in the hope of tracking down fellow Sparsholt College student, Joyce Scantlebury, to take a trip down memory lane and catch up on their lives since they last saw each other in 1954.

The One Show researcher Cat Whiteaway put in the detective work and succeeded in tracking down Joyce and then enlisted the help of Jock’s daughter Clare and Joyce’s daughter Alison to get the two of them back to Sparsholt campus in September last year.

They had initially met at Sparsholt College, Jock studying agriculture and Joyce studying horticulture, but they lost touch when Jock moved on to further study and they went their separate ways building careers and families.

On the day, unbeknownst to Jock, Joyce had already arrived and was filming at the college’s equine centre by the time he and his daughter Clare got to the college.

Filming took place in and around the college’s horticulture department, with Jock hid in the Gardeners’ Question Time Garden Potting Shed prior to ‘the big reveal’.

Over a day of filming Jock and Joyce had been kept apart as they toured different parts of the campus recounting how the site had changed since they were students.

Joyce was accompanied by her daughter Alison and her son-in-law Derek, when asked how she felt when she was asked to return to Sparsholt and see Jock again she said: “I was very surprised, but I thought it was marvellous. The campus was a lot smaller when I was here and whenever I wanted to go somewhere I had to use my bike or Jock would drive in his car.

“I remember they used to grow a lot of beetroot here because we would always have beetroot in white sauce for dinner.”

It was an emotional reunion when The One Show presenter Angellica Bell revealed Jock to Joyce.

Just before the big reveal, Jock was asked how he felt about returning to Sparsholt after so long, he said: “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time here today! It’s so different and so big! It was lovely returning to see the incredible expansion and progress the college has made over the years, the students are very fortunate today, there is so much choice.”

The episode of the show was aired at the end of January.