Kendal Oral History Group aims to compile a picture of earlier times through the recorded memories of the area’s older residents. Jim Noble was born in 1914 and was interviewed in 1994.

In 1916 they took you into school when I was three years old on that triangle of land by the church where the coat of arms is now, and they talk about the great modern development of nursery education!

There was a bungalow in which the headmistress of the school lived. There is still a little gate near Nether Bridge which leads down into the school and that was where the headmistress went through to go to school.

That land was, of course, church land and the two schools, now two halls, were built in 1858 by Archdeacon Cooper, who was one of our rich vicars of Kendal, who felt it necessary to do what he could for education and thus he opened the schools.

I was interested in music and singing from being five years of age. Apparently, as they tell me, I was the best boy in Kirkland School for singing.

It was the Parish Church Choir which started my interest in music. I learned to play the piano very quickly by the time I was seven and I was playing the big organ in the Parish Church when I was barely 13.

Music in my early days was largely Mary Wakefield and the Kendal Choral Society, which was 150 strong.

Mary Wakefield started, of course, at Sedgwick in 1885, quickly moved to Kendal; the Drill Hall was used for a time for the Festival and then St George's Hall.

Then, of course, St George's was taken over to make money for bingo and the fFestival finished up in the Leisure Centre.

I’ve often thought that it was a great pity that Kendal Town Council, when St George's Hall was offered to them with the lower hall for £34,000, that they didn’t buy it.