Older folk still remember 1976 as the year of ‘the great summer’, a comparatively rare event for South Lakeland.

But going back in history three horses and an 84-year-old man dropped dead from ‘coup de Soleil’ in 1825 and several haymakers died of sun stroke in 1911.

In 1949 sunny August days brightened the post war gloom while in 1955, to the amazement of school children, hardly a drop of rain fell during the long school holidays.

Even so, 1976 was claimed to be the driest year ever.

Already in April, Kendal only had one and a quarter inches of rain, compared to the monthly average of six inches.

The next three months were even more parched. Lupton reservoir dried up completely though, ironically, the flow in the Thirlmere to Manchester aqueduct running through the area continued unabated.

Up at Coniston, farmer Jack Batty quenched his cattle with lake water and, for his family, brought in drinking water from the village in milk churns.

As the hay meadows wilted prices dropped because livestock could not be fed. Strangely, however, despite the shortage of grass the rabbit population increased enormously.

In Ambleside a bus fell into a hole at Mason’s Corner when the dried-out carriageway collapsed.

Meanwhile, the Water Authority issued ‘Save-It Advice’, like ‘use a smaller washing up bowl’ and ‘if you do own a shower, keep a plug in the bath and reuse the water on your plants’.

But council staff got into trouble when, after a hosepipe ban came in, they were observed watering flower troughs outside Kendal’s Allen Technical College.

Even more townsfolk were infuriated by the stink from the festering Wattsfield sewerage works and doctors surgeries were ‘inundated’ by patients seeking treatment for itchy bites from a plague of ‘utrombicular’ bugs which had proliferated in the heat.

On the bright side, open air occasions like Arnside Gala, which drew 3,000 spectators, enjoyed bumper crowds; but increased hordes of ramblers led to a 75 per cent rise in accidents on the fells.

In two months Milnthorpe only had one wet day which, sadly, coincided with a royal visit from Princess Margaret, who gallantly squelched around the Market Square under a ‘new-fangled’ plastic see-through umbrella.