Kendal Rush Hour

Today's the day ........................... to re-enact

The waiting room in our dentist's surgery - where I was today - is adorned with framed photographs of Kendal in days gone by.

This is one of them, perhaps the most famous of the photographs taken by the legendary photographer, Joseph Hardman, in 1953. When he took it, running sheep through the streets of Kendal was routine, with flocks regularly driven to winter pastures and back, auction markets and even an abattoir in the town. It's a very different world 60 or more years later.

A couple of years ago in April 2014, they made an attempt to re-create the original picture as part of the Kendal Wool Gathering, an event that happens in the town every year.  In the original photograph, William Dargue, now 91, was moving his Swaledale sheep from winter pastures in the Lyth Valley back to his farm to the North East of Kendal. For the re-enactment, 150 Kendal Rough Fell ewes obediently trotted down Beast Banks to make their way down Allhallows Lane, driven by Alison O’Neill, The Shepherdess, who was on the organising committee of Kendal Wool Gathering.

The resulting photograph is shown below ........................