Town in Cumbria, England
Kendal
A town whose minty energy bar went up Everest, whose alleyways were built to keep out raiders, and where Wainwright did his sums by day and drew mountains by night.
Key information
- County
- Cumbria
- Nation
- England
- Population
- About 28,000, 2011 Census
- Known for
- Kendal Mint Cake, snuff, K Shoes, Kendal Green cloth, the Lake District gateway, Abbot Hall
- What locals are called
- Kendalians
- Famous people
- Alfred Wainwright, George Romney, John Dalton, Catherine Parr
- Football clubs
- Kendal Town (the Mintcakes)
About Kendal
The sweet that went up Everest
Kendal's most famous export is a slab of sugar, glucose and peppermint oil. Kendal Mint Cake is said to have been born in 1869, when confectioner Joseph Wiper was making glacier mints and a batch went cloudy and refused to set properly. He sold the result anyway, and a legend was born. Its big break came from explorers. Ernest Shackleton took it south on his 1914 Antarctic expedition, and Romney's, another Kendal maker, supplied the 1953 British Everest expedition. Mountaineers have favoured it ever since as pocket-sized fuel. The town's football team is now called the Mintcakes. That's about as proud as a nickname gets.
Why the town is called auld and grey
Kendal's nickname, the Auld Grey Town, comes from the pale limestone that gives its streets a silvery look, especially under a Lakeland drizzle. Look between the shopfronts and you'll find narrow passages known as yards and ginnels, more than a hundred and fifty of them. Many were laid out so that cattle and townsfolk could be shut inside from Scottish raiders, and later they were packed with workshops and cottages. Walking them today is the best way to read the town's layout.
Cloth is my bread
Kendal's motto is Pannus mihi panis, Latin for cloth is my bread, and it wasn't an idle boast. From the Middle Ages the town was a cloth centre, famous for hard-wearing Kendal Green, dyed with local plants. Shakespeare gives it a mention in Henry IV, Part 1, where rogues in Kendal green leap out of the dark. Later trades followed the same practical spirit. Snuff-makers set up in the town, and Kendal Brown, a coarse, fragrant blend, is still made here. Somervell's business began in 1842 as a leather merchant, and footwear manufacturing followed later, growing into K Shoes, one of the town's big names for generations.
A castle, a painter and a man with a pencil
On a hill east of the River Kent sit the ruins of Kendal Castle, once the home of the Parr family. Catherine Parr, who became Henry VIII's sixth wife and outlived him, is the family's best-known name and is closely tied to the town. The portrait painter George Romney lived and died in Kendal, in 1802, and Abbot Hall Art Gallery, in an elegant Georgian house by the river, shows his work. John Dalton, the chemist who developed modern atomic theory, taught at a Quaker school in the town in the 1780s and 1790s. Then there's Alfred Wainwright. He came to Kendal in 1941 and worked as the borough treasurer from 1948, writing and drawing his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland fells in the evenings. He also served as honorary curator of Kendal Museum, and the town's fells are still his unofficial memorial.
Boots, banners and big screens
Every November the Kendal Mountain Festival fills the town with climbers, film-makers and adventurers, with film screenings, talks and plenty of muddy boots. It has run since 1980 and is one of the biggest gatherings of its kind in Britain. The Brewery Arts Centre keeps the cultural calendar busy all year, and the autumn torchlight carnival has been lighting up the streets for generations. For most visitors Kendal is the first proper town on the way into the Lakes. Take the train to Oxenholme or drive up the M6, stock up on mint cake and head for the hills.