FOR more than 40 years one dedicated woman has kept a scattered village community ‘firmly on the map’ in South Lakeland.

Lenore Knowles has been The Westmorland Gazette’s Selside district correspondent since 1973.

But she wasn’t the first member of her family to fill that important role.

Prior to Lenore, her mother, Mary Huck, had penned the weekly happenings in the tiny village that lies between Kendal and Shap for the Gazette.

And from the years 1899 to 1914, Lenore’s grandfather, Henry Jennings, also kept South Lakeland and beyond up-to-date with community news from Selside.

Lenore has lived at Hollowgate Farm, Selside, all her life and has been married to Thomas for 57 years. Born and bred into a farming family, Lenore was destined to stay on the farm, but she had ambitions to write.

“I love to write, whether with a pen or tip tapping on the computer with one finger,” said Lenore.

“I’ve led such a wonderful life, from running the farm with my mother for two years when my father passed away, to living through the Second World War. I remember a nearby farm being bombed in 1941 – I can picture it now.

“I have a lot of stories to tell and for a long, long time I have wanted to write a book.”

Lenore has scrapbooks packed full of community news written by herself, her mother and her grandfather.

She has a collection from the Gazette of stories about Selside and her own family dating back to the late 1800s.

The newspaper cuttings range from pictures of the Jarrow marches to Selside schoolchildren sitting on the back of a horse and cart on the way to class.

When asked whether she enjoys being a correspondent, the mother-of-two simply said: “It is just part of my life.”

She added: “I like keeping Selside on the map. If you do some good in this world then just get on with it.”

And she will keep ‘getting on with it’ until someone else takes over.

The grandmother-of-four said: “When I was younger I used to imagine myself in an office, typing on a typewriter. That’s what I wanted to do.

“But, back in those days you did what your parents told you to do and they wanted me on the farm, so that’s what I did.

“But now, when I am typing away at the computer, doing the district news I think ‘Well that’s me, I’m doing that now’.”