SHIONE Carden was born in Calcutta in 1934, as the younger of two sisters, where her father worked as a mechanical engineer.
On the outbreak of war the family returned to their relatives in Northern Ireland before moving to Derby when her father was appointed by the government to join a large engineering works. She finished her education locally and at Penhrose College, before employment at the Foreign Office from 1952. In London she met and married Michael Carden in 1957, during his final year as an architectural student, and typed his undergraduate thesis in 1960 while nursing their first child, Matthew. Their second child, Melanie was born in Reigate in 1962, where they had moved when Michael was employed in a small local practice.