Delia Daws, (nee Towers), of Kendal, recalls the days before many of the town’s housing estates were built

IT IS an old saying: ‘Those who live the longest will see the most’, and the longer I live the more houses I see going up in Kendal.

At one time I could name every street, but not any more.

I remember Heron Hill being a single street, the houses occupied by workers from Netherfield, including my uncle George Smith.

He was a buyer of the leather for ‘K’ Shoes.

The fields at the rear were ideal for our picnics in summer and sledging in winter. In the summer the field approaching Asda (now built on) was a cricket pitch.

Heron Hill boys and Helme Drive girls would meet most mornings for a game of cricket.

Summer began on Easter Sunday morning when all the girls wore new white cotton ankle socks. We went back to school for the summer term in cotton summer dresses.

This was in the days when summer really could be called summer!

In the 1990s I worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross on medical loans.

An old girl of Kendal High School came in one day to borrow a wheelchair and she told me she was living in a house built on our old hockey pitch.

What memories it brought back! People buying houses built recently won’t know they are living on somebody else’s memories.