Kentmere Hydro Trust

The Kentmere Hydro Trust is harnessing the power of the River Kent in South East Lakeland part of the Lake District National Park, in order to make its own hydro electric power. Since the place looks like a mini Switzerland, but is very desolate and in parts isolated, that seems like a good idea.

When I was a child, myself and family would occasionally stay at my aunt's house at Hallow Bank, Kentmere, near Kendal, or at neighbouring Fold Howe, a house just across the way from Hallow Bank. Actually, her house was in a small hamlet up a private road which was really more like a dirt track. The road up there from Staveley runs for about four miles and is very narrow in parts.

Kentmere village is about one and a half miles from Hallow Bank and it has a church there I am sure it used to have some kind of post office but this will have long gone I think. The Eagle and Child pub in Staveley was near a playground and the River Kent rushed along neaby. There was apparently one part of the River Kent in which it was possible for adults to swin but you had to know exactly where it was as some areas of the river were dangerous. Another feature was the nearby pinewood and a stream called The Dolly Tub which was an area forming a small pool where it was possible to actually sit on rocks in the water if it was warm weather.

Originally my aunt's house had a generator for electricity and there was only enough power to use during the day. At night the house was lit by oil lamps and I was always dubious when the lamps were brought out of the lamp cupboard in the evening as I hated the smell of them when lit. My aunt and uncle had no TV in their house but there were lots of interesting things to do, it was such a beautiful place.

The postman would bring the mail in a 'Postman Pat' type van and we used to walk up to Dickinson's farm nearby, carrying a small milk churn and bring home milk straight from the cows. Sometimes the milk was warm and had a few black specks in it and yes it was probably not a good idea to drink untreated milk, but we used to put it on the cornflakes back then and my aunt would cyphon it into milk bottles and put her own coloured stoppers on them. She also made her own cider from apples growing in her orchard.

From one of the kitchen windows it was possible to see a snow capped mountain with a small stream running down it (you could see the stream if you used binoculars). The kitchen was very homely with red and white striped curtains, a Raeburn cooker and a sort of calendar written in German with an owl on it, next to a barometer. In large walnut style glass fronted cupboards my aunt kept pewter goblets and ancient crockery from times long past. Dinah, my aunt's faithful golden labrador, would lay contentedly on her blanket in the kitchen.