If a contest were to be held to discover the nation’s most added-to industrial building, Kendal would have a strong contender; its claim to the laurels reinforced by the swish new extension that has appeared during the past 12 months.

The building in question, that of Gilkes at Canal Head, has been extended at least a dozen times during its 200-year evolution from canal warehouse complex to present-day factory and offices, with the result that most of the original fabric is now concealed from view.

It is our good fortune, therefore, that the north wing of the original building survives in plain view, facing onto Canal Head North, for this still has attached to it the very first of the extensions.

It’s a quaint little thing, looking like a squarish cottage, whose south-western corner intrudes slightly into what was originally a stable block. It juts out into Canal Head North as it always has, but it has lost its chimney stack and both of its external doors, the east one blocked, the west one replaced by a window. Its visual appeal, though, remains.

But how did it get there?

The warehouse complex was still getting its finishing touches when in September 1819, unannounced, workmen set about dismantling this corner of the brand new stable block ‘for the purpose of taking up chimneys for the Earl of Balcarres’s counting house’, as the canal committee minutes calmly record.

The earl, a Lancashire coal owner, had taken a lease on the wharfage on the north side of the canal basin, adjacent to the stables and, with the aplomb not untypical of nineteenth century businessmen, had set about building his coal-yard office where he wanted it, even though this involved any number of infringements of legal and neighbourly behaviour.

The day following news of this unwelcome development, a small posse of town councillors paid a site visit, were predictably enraged and immediately dispatched a stern letter of rebuke, demanding that the stable be restored to its original condition - but the construction of the site office went ahead.

So what happened?

Whatever the reason, we can be thankful that the earl had his way. For in the post-war redevelopment of canal head, involving the infilling of the basin and the demolition of all its other wharf-side buildings, this one, lying safely out of the way of their huge factory extension, was retained by Gilkes and incorporated into their premises.