Margery was born in London in December 1923, the third child of Grace Mackenzie & Charles Chambers. She grew up in Charlton in south London and in 1939 when war broke out, she was a student at the Roan School for Girls in Greenwich. Along with thousands of other children across the country Margery was evacuated. The students from the Roan School were moved, first to the south coast, to Bexhill-on-Sea; but then in mid-1940, with the fall of France and the threat of invasion from across the Channel, the children were moved again - this time across the country to Ammanford in South Wales.