Historian Peter Holme, of Kendal, describes the launch of the first Lake District mountain rescue teams . . .

IN MARCH, 1808, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote a pamphlet to raise some money for a family whose mother and father had died on the Lake District fells.

She wrote: "One day one of the Green’s boys (neigh-bours) had gone to the nearest house to borrow a cloak and, on being asked for what purpose, he replied that his sister was going to Langdale to look for his mother and father who had not returned home when expected on Saturday.

"The men of the house started up immediately and went on the hills to search but in vain as no trace of the couple could be found."

She continued: "Tuesday was like a Sabbath in the Vale for all the men had left their usual work and did not return until the bodies of the two were found on Wednesday afternoon.”

There was no organised body to help rescue people trapped, injured or lost on the fells. If someone required help he or she had to rely on luck to find and persuade farm workers to abandon their jobs, usually with a five barred gate as a makeshift stretcher, to bring the victim down. This method lasted until well into the 20th Century.

In 1933 the ‘Rucksack Club’ and the ‘Fell & Rock Climbing Club’ combined, firstly to design a stretcher that was adaptable for the steep and rough country of the Lakeland hills.

Eustace Thomas, a well-known long distance fell walker of the time, produced the finally accepted design.

A committee was then formed. Known as ‘The First Aid Committee of Mountaineering Clubs’ its initial task was to organise equipment and medical items to be stored in a series of mountain huts. The Ministry of Health was persuaded to supply basic first aid for the rescue posts.

There was still not a formal group who would go out on rescue missions. If someone was injured they and/or their companion would have to get to the nearest such post and, hopefully, find some willing helpers either on a farm or in a pub to carry the injured person down to a point where they could be transported to hospital by road.

It was not until 1947 that Keswick Mountain Rescue became the first officially recognised body, with Coniston forming another team in 1952.

In the Gazette of October 11, 1952, a short paragraph appeared: “An organisation for co-ordinating mountain rescue and first aid work in the Lake District National Park was established at a conference attended by interested local and national organisations at Ambleside on Saturday. The police authorities in Cumberland and Westmorland agreed to make quicker and wider notification of persons missing on the fells so that the vital first 24 hours could be used to the best advantage in the hopes of finding the missing walkers still alive.”

This was the start of Mountain Rescue as we know it but it still had a long way to go before it became the efficient organisation it is today.