CENTENARIANS were rare a century ago. Nowadays, there are said to be 14,000 living recipients of hundredth birthday greetings from the Queen.

But, in November 1914, the report that Joseph Bamford of Endmoor had reached 100 knocked 'The War' off the main news pages of The Westmorland Gazette.

It was, the paper claimed, 'the first time within modern history that the inhabitants of the neighbourhood have had a real live centenarian in their midst'.

Earlier centenarians had included Elizabeth Walker from Grasmere 'who dyed at ye age of 107 in 1674'; Agnes Storey of Heversham, who was 100 in 1694 and John Hall, of Appleby, who made 101 in 1801.

The most recent local centenarian was believed to be 'Auld Mally Birkett' from Kendal's Fellside, who died at the age of 102 in 1882.

Mally had been a camp follower with the British forces fighting Napoleon, whose final defeat at Waterloo occurred eight months after Joseph Bamford's birth.

Ironically, having lived throughout the 99 years of the great European peace, his birthday celebrations were marred by news that one of his three grandsons serving on the Western Front had been taken prisoner and another had been wounded. He had, earlier, lost a grandson in the Boer War.

Nevertheless, Granddad Jo was not totally bereft, as it was calculated that he had 120 descendants, comprising three sons, four daughters, about 90 grandchildren, 30 to 40 great grandchildren 'and the branches of his genealogical tree ramify into the fifth generation'.

Remarkably, he could 'tell where most of his grandchildren are located, whether it is in Australia, America, New Zealand or different towns in England'.

Moreover, longevity, was a family trait, as he had a brother still alive at 97, while their grandfather had drowned at Force Falls when he was 92.

But Joseph out did them all: dying on December 22, 1916 - he lived to be 102!

Inevitably, Endmoor's villagers claimed their centenarian as their very own celebrity and, as he was 'an inveterate snuff taker', they presented him with a silver snuff box.

But, in fact, Joseph had been born at the Blue Bell Inn at Heversham from where he had attended, briefly, the Grammar School before serving for 37 years on the Sizergh Castle estate, latterly as a gamekeeper.

He then, for a similar period, became a cooper making gunpowder barrels for Wakefields' works at Gatebeck.

Yet, his 75 years of working life did him no harm. He still read the paper, had a good appetite and, being the son of a publican, liked a drink.

A visitor gushed: 'I think you ought to have a gallon of whisky for your hundredth birthday. "Quite right," said old Joe, "but if ye can't send a gallon, half-a-gallon will do"'.