Originally published 2022-01-23.
Kathleen Saville and Olive Woodward met as 11-year-old schoolgirls in Nottinghamshire, England, and were still best friends 78 years later. At 89, they found themselves living under the same roof again, as residents of Berry Hill Park, a care home in Mansfield. Their story, first reported in December 2019, became one of the most shared friendship stories of that winter, and it still speaks to anyone wondering how a friendship survives a whole lifetime.
From a school desk to the same care home
The two girls met at Ravenshead School and quickly became inseparable. They grew up, worked and raised families in the same part of Nottinghamshire, a coal-mining area, and both married miners. For most of their adult lives they lived within easy reach of each other.
Their working lives took different paths. Kathleen became a supervisor at the Mansfield Telephone Exchange, in the era when calls were still connected by operators. Olive worked as an invoice typist at the Arthur Richardson warehouse. Different jobs, different routines, and still the same friendship at weekends and in between.
Around the middle of 2018, Kathleen moved into Berry Hill Park, a residential, nursing and dementia care home on Berry Hill Lane. Olive did not let that change things. She came to see her every Saturday for lunch, and over time she decided that rather than visit, she would move in too. Home manager Sally Tebbett described the pair as inseparable, and staff took to calling them the "dynamic duo".
In their own words
Asked what the friendship meant to her, Olive put it in one sentence: "If I'm unhappy or in trouble I only have to go to Kathleen and we'll always end up laughing."
Kathleen said they had known from the start that the friendship would last, and that Olive meant a great deal to her. She also joked about the future, saying, "If Olive goes first, she'll come back to fetch me," and added that they hoped to stay friends in heaven. With a wink, she claimed the two of them behaved well at the home but occasionally had to keep the staff in line.
The secret, according to both women, was simple: they said they never argued or bickered. Instead of point-scoring, they laughed and, in their own words, just blended together.
Their advice: do not wait to be visited
When asked what they would tell people who feel lonely or miss their friends, the pair turned it into an instruction. Make the effort yourself. Go and see your friend instead of waiting for them to come to you. Or, as they summed it up, "It takes two to tango."
It is a small piece of advice that carries a lot of weight. Long friendships rarely survive on fond memories alone. They survive because someone keeps picking up the phone, turning up for lunch, or, in Olive's case, deciding to move to the same address.
Why lifelong friendships matter in later life
Research on ageing keeps returning to the same theme: social connection matters for wellbeing. In 2023 the US Surgeon General issued an advisory describing loneliness and social isolation as a serious public-health concern, linked in studies with poorer physical and mental health. In the UK, charities such as Age UK and the Campaign to End Loneliness have long warned that many older people go days or weeks without a meaningful conversation.
A friend of nearly eight decades offers something new acquaintances cannot: shared memory. Kathleen and Olive did not need to explain their families, their town or the world they grew up in. They could pick up a story from 1940s schooldays as easily as one from last week. For people adjusting to life in a care home, that kind of familiar company can make a new place feel less strange.
Friendships of this length are also rarer than they might seem. Over eight decades, people move away, lose touch after marriage or a new job, and outlive many of their peers. Kathleen and Olive had the advantage of staying in the same community, but they also chose, again and again, to keep showing up for each other. That steady choice, more than luck, is what turned a schoolyard friendship into a lifelong one.
None of this means every older person needs a best friend from childhood. It does suggest that keeping existing friendships going, and making it easy for older relatives to see the people they love, is worth real effort.
How families and care homes can help friendships continue
If someone you care for is moving into residential care, a few practical steps can help their friendships carry on:
- Ask about visiting arrangements early, including whether friends, not just family, can come for meals or activities.
- Offer lifts. Many older friends stop meeting simply because neither can drive or travel easily any more.
- Set up regular calls or video chats on a fixed day, so contact becomes a routine rather than an occasional effort.
- Mention close friendships to staff. Care teams can seat friends together, plan shared activities and pass on news.
- Consider proximity. When two friends both need care, it is worth asking whether the same home, or homes near each other, might work.
A note on the timeline
Some versions of this story circulated again in 2022 and framed it as a post-pandemic reunion. In fact, the reporting dates from December 2019, before Covid-19 reached the UK. The figures here, 89 years of age and 78 years of friendship, belong to that date. The pandemic later brought long visiting restrictions to British care homes, which makes the image of two friends sharing the same home, with no visits to arrange, all the more touching in hindsight.
Sources: Eastwood Advertiser / Chad, December 2019: Childhood friends of 78 years reunited at Mansfield care home; Positive Outlooks; US Surgeon General, 2023: advisory on loneliness and isolation.
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