I have a number of photographs of different well-known views around the Lake District which reveal a then and now theme. There are landscape scenes portrayed by well-known photographers of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Men like the Abrahams, the Dixons, the Sandersons, Mr J. Hardman, Mr Ivor Nicholas.

If these people were around today they could not find these views which helped them to earn a living. Mr Hardman used to hire a taxi for a day and he and his wife would tour an area with his tripod camera and take pictures of the scenery and country happenings for posterity. (Ivor Nicholas is still with us).

Ashness Bridge, for instance, is one of the most photographed places in the country, yet now many of the features of the view are lost in overgrowth.

I felt that I had to do this project when the Lake District National Park Authority got the idea to apply for World Heritage status for the park. How, or why, should it ever qualify for such a position? I and a lot of other Lakeland folk cannot understand.

The Welsh mountains, the Norfolk broads, the Cuillins of Skye, the Cairngorms and the 2,000-year-old brochs and remains of dwellings in Orkney would qualify - and more so.

I have lived in the county for 87 years and for the last 50 have watched the Lakeland countryside deteriorate in different ways, first as the photographs show, in the neglect and overgrowth of acres of woodland belonging to the National Trust, United Utilities, absentee owners and others.

Second, the disappearance of farms and neglect of what was good, crop-producing land, which is now becoming overgrown with sieves (rushes) and thistles.

When I went as a farmworker to the parish in 1951 where I lived for 62 years there were 32 holdings connected with agriculture. Now, at the present time, there are four. All other land is grazed by other farmers from neighbouring parishes. Meanwhile farm houses and buildings become holiday homes or are bought by retired people from the cities.

Our forefathers spent their lives clearing, draining and ploughing the land to feed their families and communities, which were close knit in those days, also building walls and planting thorn hedges to make the landscape which we used to be able to see until three or four decades ago. (Note the nice fell wall on the 1930 photograph, now lost in undergrowth on the recent picture due to lack of grazing and management).

The heritage is vanishing or has vanished and the Lakeland countryman is becoming a rare breed, like some of the farm animals.

In all honesty, the Cumbrian coastal plain, from Barrow to Bowness-on-Solway, has as much and possibly more right to World Heritage Status, with its history of coal and iron ore mining, steel making, ship building and a network of railways carrying ore and limestone between the fells and the coastal ports - not forgetting the fishing industry.

So let us see the authorities and powers-that-be put the effort and expense that has been put into this World Heritage idea channelled into opening up an overgrown Lakeland national park and improving the highways which, like some other areas, are overgrown and neglected considering they carry a lot of tourist traffic and coaches which are the lifeblood of a lot of businesses.

Let the tourist see the views and landscapes which Joseph Hardman and his fellow photographers recorded for us. They are still there - all it needs is the garden weeded.

I am sad to say that nowadays I prefer to tour the Solway Plain, the Pennines and northward from the North York Moors.