Peggy moved with her family to Tonbridge in about 1926 where her father made leather goods to sell in the shop where he worked in the High Street, which he often ran for the absent boss. Her father had bought the two semi-detached houses in St Mary's Road, one of which they rented out to help with the mortgage, and the other in which they lived.

Peggy adored her father and she recalled times when she rode on the bars of her Dad's pushbike with him to the local pond, in the now Haysden Country Park, to catch tiddlers and tadpoles, holding her net and jam-jar.

Her mother taught her piano and she started learning the violin too.