Kendal Oral History Group aims to compile a picture of earlier times through the recorded memories of the area’s older residents. Mr Ashton T Gates was born in 1907 and interviewed in July 1998

My mother bought me a dinner jacket outfit when I was 16 and we used to go to the Golf Ball at the Golf hotel at Grange-over-Sands.

Old father Stainton used to take six of us - three boys, three girls - down in a big Austin Taxi then come back for us at two o’clock in the morning for next to nothing.

Apart from that we used to get on out motorbikes and go to Morecambe.

In my young days you couldn’t get into Morecambe directly. There was no coast road – you went to Torrisholme.

When you got there the first place you came to was the 'Tower', where there was a ballroom and a restaurant and a theatre.

The next one was the pier where the dancing was and then there was Thora Hird’s father’s theatre, which put on plays.

The next one you would come to was The Winter Gardens, where there was dancing, eating or theatre and still further on round by the Battery there was yet another theatre. All that went on in Morecambe in those days.

Another event we never missed and that was the New Year’s Eve at the Golf at Grange. We always used to go to that.

For about three or four pounds you got a five-course dinner and there was dancing ‘til two in the morning and at 12 o’clock they used to have a little ceremony. Father time used to come in with a scythe over his shoulder and he would be pulling a sort of cart thing with an egg on it and at 12 o’clock exactly the egg opened and a little girl stepped out in a fairy costume.

Then we all joined hands and sang Auld Lang Syne.

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