MORE than a decade in the making the K Village Heritage Centre offers a fascinating insight into the lives of the men and women who worked at the K Shoes factory.

Local historian Jonathan Somervell – a former employee of the factory – has spent years collecting photographs of the factory and its workers with the help of historian Audrey Salkeld.

Packed to the gills with fascinating memorabilia, photographs, archive footage, adverts, tools and machinery, the centre has been more than a decade in the making.

“Jonathan has been building up his collection for a number of years,” said Ms Salkeld.

“In 1996 when they pulled down the old K Shoes he started to build up an alternative collection, which is quite extensive.”

Newly restored material has been combined with archives and memorabilia from the former K Village heritage centre – much of which is on loan from Clarks.

“This exhibition is more about the people who made the shoes,” said Mr Somervell. “We get a mixed bunch of visitors.

“A lot of curious people come in and a lot of Kendal people who worked at the factory.

“In a sense the exhibition will never be finished. We have had so much to draw on that we can’t use everything.”

Among the treasures is a lightweight climbing shoe designed by K Shoes especially for an Olympic athlete, a lizard skin shoe and several posters advertising the company.

K Shoes was renowned for its advertising and used a number of well-known artists and copywriters including Man Ray and crime writer Dorothy Sayers.

But Mr Somervell’s favourite piece is a long tool used for tacking shoes together.

“It was a very fiddly job,” he said. “They had to line up the tacks and hammer them in so they had a specially designed tool and they became very skilled at holding the tacks in their mouth and picking them out with pincers to make the job quicker.

“When the men left the factory at the end of the day they would spit out the tacks onto the road and they were notorious for puncturing people’s tyres.

“There were also tack feelers whose job it was to feel inside the shoes for nails which should have been removed and nip them off. It was a very painful job and they all had their fingers bandaged up.

“Sole cutters had it even worse as they could lose a thumb through the machinery if they weren’t careful.

“I don’t think there was a man working there that didn’t have a finger missing!”