KENDAL historian Arthur R. Nicholls recalls how the almshouses in Romney Road came to be built.

People often question why Romney Road, from Milnthorpe Road to the Nether roundabout at Kendal is so wide. When it was built it connected to the old pedestrian suspension bridge over the river and there were plans to convert it to a road bridge which never came to fruition.

The houses along the road are quite ordinary except for numbers 1&2, a semi-detached pair with steep twin gables.

Dated 1928, they are thought to have been designed by George Hoggarth. Each house has a living room and scullery, two bedrooms and a bathroom.

A plaque in the centre of the houses reads: "Watkins Memorial Almshouses" and this indicates a fascinating story.

The houses were built under the will of Mary Agnes Watkins, whose husband, John, was a barrister from Tasmania.

Tombstones in Parkside Road cemetery show that he came from the Myerscough family, the name going back to the 13th century and now seen in the village near Preston. There was a Protestant branch of the family in the Fylde area and a Catholic branch in Lancashire.

Richard Myerscough of Over Kellett had four brothers, all Catholics. Their descendants were canal boatmen in the early 19th century and this brings us to Simon.

Simon Myerscough, the earliest name on the family tombstones, who died in 1855, was an established citizen of Kendal. He was one of the jury that signed the Borough's boundary record in 1821.

In 1829 he is recorded as an agent for James Machell & Co, who operated boats from Canal Head to London, Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, Lancaster and all parts of the South and to Wales. He lived and operated from Lowther Street.

The family was not wealthy. His wife, Dorothy, was an annuitant, their daughter, Charlotte was a dressmaker. They also took in a lodger.

John W. Atkins came from a Catholic family in Monmouth, which emigrated to Australia in the early 19th century. His father, John, was a clockmaker. He emigrated to Tasmania where he married Mary Myerscough, from Kendal, in the Catholic Chapel in Hobart Town.

He became Marshall of the Vice-Admiralty Court and was Registrar of that and the Supreme Court. He died of cancer in 1866 at the young age of 49. They had no children.

Mary continued to live in Hobart before returning with her mother and sisters to the family home in 26 Lowther Street, where the 1881 census shows her as the head of the household.

She died in 1908 and in her will left money to establish almshouses for poor residents of Kendal.

The residents, not exceeding four, were to be of either sex, married or single, 50 or over and were not to be ineligible on grounds of religion or because they were receiving the old age pension.

They could use the gardens, received a weekly sum from the trustees, and could be expelled at a month's notice.

Who would have thought that these two houses in an ordinary street could tell such a story?