THERE was a double graduation for a Siddington couple early this summer.

Husband and wife, Stephen and Rebecca Connolly celebrated their graduations in July, unusually both at the same place; Bath Abbey.

Rebecca graduated with a first class BA (Hons) in Textile Design from Bath Spa University, 24 hours after Stephen graduated with an MA in Scriptwriting, also from Bath Spa.

"We thought we could get away with hiring just one set of graduation robes, until finding out the MA's hood was a different shape,” said Rebecca.

"The suppliers of the robes kindly allowed us to have my robes a day early so we could have a joint photograph.”

Rebecca began the BA 6 years ago, after studying A Level Textiles at Cirencester College. She decided to study Textile Design at Bath Spa on a part time basis alongside work and parenting.

By chance she picked up a leaflet for Bath Spa's MA Scriptwriting course and passed it to her aspiring scriptwriter husband Stephen, who had been submitting scripts to the BBC without success.

"Being able to study part time and attend lectures at weekends made it feasible for us both to be students" said Stephen.

"I was nervous about being the oldest person on the MA course, but this meant I had a lot of life experience to use for ideas."

Following on from their respective courses, Rebecca's hand-woven cloth designs have been shown at New Designers 2015 in London and with The Cambrian Mountains Wool Challenge touring exhibition. While Stephen’s short play The Garden of Earthly Delights was recently performed in Brighton’s New Venture Theatre as a winner in their 10 Minute Play competition.

Locally, Stephen is recording a number of radio plays for Corinium Radio and writing for the Stroud Fringe and Theatre Festivals.

Rebecca weaves to commission, specialising in using British Wool, and teaches; she is doing weaving taster days and courses for Cotswold Conservation Board's Rural Skills programme at The Old Prison, Northleach.