By MOLLY CLARK who was born in 1918 and interviewed by Kendal Oral History Group in 2000.

Kendal Oral History Group aims to compile a picture of earlier times through the recorded memories of the area’s older residents.

IN 1935 I was looking for a job and my mother said get in touch with your aunt and see if she knows of anything.

She got me a job at the big house at Curwen Woods (Holme) as a parlour maid.

They had been used to a lot of servants, they even had a butler. However, they had lost their money in the 1929 financial crash.

There was just Miss Hilda Atkinson and Mr Hadwin, who lived in the lodge (he was gardener, chauffeur and general factotum) and me.

It was hard work. I mean the first job in the morning was to come downstairs and I had to light the fire and get the kettle boiling and take the morning tea upstairs.

After that I used to do the oak room fire, which would only burn wood.

On Friday mornings I used to have to get up about an hour and a half sooner - about quarter past five - to clean the flues out and blacklead and get the fire going, then go and have a good wash and change me clothes so that I had clean ones on.

Then I used to have to take a walk across the park for the milk before I could take the morning tea upstairs.

The hall was big, I wish you could have seen it. The hall was lovely and when they’d money they used to roll the carpets up and it was a ballroom.

There was a lovely drawing room and morning room and there was the big dining room and the butler’s pantry.

Upstairs on the landing the first room was Mrs W’s sewing room then the next one was what they called the nursery and the next one was the night nursery.

Then came the master bedroom and that had a bathroom joined on to it. It was a really big nice old house.