William Barrow KendallHistorian, Naturalist, Engineer |
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WILLIAM BARROW KENDALL, eldest son of Thomas Kendall and grandson of William Kendall of Salthouse, was born 31 January 1851, at Salthouse. He was educated at Town Bank Grammar School, Ulverston.
At the time of his birth his father was managing the Salthouse farm, but in 1854 he took over Hindpool Farm, his son remaining at Salthouse until 1873 however, when he joined his family then resident at 60 Mount Pleasant, Barrow. In 1867 he entered the Engineer's Office of the Furness Railway under Mr William Harrison and was trained as a civil engineer, eventually qualifying as A.M.I.C.E. When Mr James Ramsden came to Barrow in the early days of the Furness Railway, he lodged for some years with William Kendall at Salthouse, and continued the friendship after he left the hamlet. It was due to his influence, probably, that W.B.Kendall became connected with the F.R.
Early in 1868, at the request of his grandfather, he commenced to collect material for a history of Salthouse and it is due to this happy circumstance that W.B.Kendall became interested in local history, of which he was such a prolific recorder. As he himself has written:-
"At first it was my intention to compile nothing more than a short history of the village and introduce such traditions of the place as might come under my notice, but I soon found it necessary to extend the limits of my operations and I had to make the work a much more general one than I had originally intended."
His opportunities were, of course, considerable, for apart from family papers the village of 28 houses which was Barrow in 1843 was only distant a quarter of a century and there were many still living whose recollections of Furness extended back to the closing years of the l8th century.
He was an early member of the Barrow Naturalists' Field Club, his name appearing in the list of members for the second year (1877), at which time he took a keen interest in the society, although after he left Barrow his connection was maintained more with a few members, with whom he kept in touch by correspondence throughout much of his life. His first paper "Mineralogy at the Paris Exhibition" was delivered on 10 February 1879 after visiting the exhibition as a sub delegate of an organised party from Barrow, and on 15 December of the same year came the first of a remarkable series of local papers - "Glacial Deposits in Furness and district" continued as "Submerged Peat Mosses, Forest Remains, and Post Glacial Deposits in Barrow Harbour" on 26 November 1880. "The Conventual Buildings of Furness Abbey" followed on 26 May 1882. Although this has been sowewhat superseded by later excavations and knowledge, it still contains much valuable and reliable information.
He was secretary of the Marine Section of the B.N.F.C. from March 1879 to May 1883 (the amusing illustrated "minutes" of the sectional meeting of 8 May 1880 appear as plate IV, facing page 49 of Proc.B.N.F.C., vol.3, No.2. Furness Lore), and he was elected to the joint office of Chairman and Secretary, but the section lapsed through lack of support; Chairman of the Geological Section 1881-2; and member of the General Committee l883-4, where he is shown in the list as ineligible for re-election. This was because he left the service of the Furness Railway late in 1883 and for the next twelve years was engaged by various contractors and engineers as resident engineer on works both in this country and abroad. In 1885 he was elected to Honorary Membership (proposed at a Committee meeting 8 June 1885, and elected at the General meeting 5 September l885), and his letter of acknowledgment written from Frome, Somerset, on 29 September 1885 shows how the honour pleased him and how he was still thinking of ways in which he could help the Club.
About the year 1895 Mr Kendall entered the service of Mr Frank Stileman* with whom he remained until the practice was given up. During the years he was with Mr Stileman he maintained a permanent residence at Harlesden, in N.W.London and thus was able to resume work on his collection of local historical data and extend it by visits to the Public Record Office and other places in London where original documents may be studied. "Cocken: The History of a Furness Village" (delivered to the B.N.F.C. on 16 November 1896) was the first result, followed by "Northscale" (21 March 1898), "Gleaston Castle" (on the site, 23 August 1902), "Notes on the Village of Barrow" (6 January 1903), "Waste of Coast Line, Furness and Walney in 1000 Years" (at Biggar, 23 July 1904) and "Muchland and its Owners" (20 January 1908 and 24 December 1908, extracted from the full work of some 170 pages of MS). All these were read by Mr Harper Gaythorpe, with whom Mr Kendall carried on a regular local antiquarian correspondence until the death of the former in 1909, when it was continued to some extent with the late Mr P.V.Kelly.
* Mr Frank Stileman in his earlier days, was also in the service of the Furness Railway Co., and resided with his parents at "Arndene", Abbey Road, Barrow. Later he was taken into Partnership in the firm of McClean and Stileman and afterwards became a well-known consultant engineer with offices at 1 Victoria Street, Westminster, where Mr Kendall joined him. His father joined the B.N.F.C. in November 1876 and Mr Stileman at the same time as W.B.Kendall. (Nominated at a meeting of the Committee 19 March 1877, and elected at the General Meeting 24 March 1877)
After Mr Stileman's retirement, W.B.Kendall was engaged first by Pearson & Co., and then by Sir Douglas Fox & Co. In 1916, while acting as resident engineer during the construction of a large shell-filling factory at Pembry, South Wales, he contracted a serious attack of bronchitis, from which illness he never recovered completely. He continued in active work however, although grave heart and other conditions developed, but while engaged at Passage West, Queenstown in connection with alterations to a graving dock in May 1918, failing health compelled him to retire, and being a bachelor, he went to reside with his brother Thomas, Board of Trade Surveyor, at 9 Clarence Avenue, Londonderry, where he died on 29 August 1919, in his 69th year. He is buried in the beautiful cemetery at Londonderry, overlooking the river Foyle. An obituary notice from the pen of Mr S.B.Gaythorpe appeared in the "Barrow News" for 20 September, 1919. Some further account of his family is contained in the obituary of his father, published in the "Barrow Herald" for 9 September, 1871.
Following W.B.Kendall's death it was found that he had left a number of manuscripts and at the request of Mr Thomas Kendall, Mr Paul V. Kelly examined some of these. As a result, "Salthouse", the original "Kendall paper", hitherto unknown, was discovered and read to the B.N.F.C. in two parts, on 5 December 1921 and 6 February l922. It was then set aside, but finally was published in Proc.B.N.F.C. n.s. vol.11 in 1948. Mr Kelly also used certain other material in papers written for the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society about that time.
Later, Mr Thomas Kendall died (the brothers are buried in the same grave), and so matters remained until his son, Mr Harold Kendall, visiting Barrow in 1939, invited Mr Kelly to inspect and list the remaining manuscripts of his uncle. Pressure of other affairs and his own fading health prevented Mr Kelly completing the work, and after his death in 1944 this was done by Messrs. J.Melville and J.L.Hobbs. Several unknown papers were discovered and after suitable editing rendered necessary by the passing of time, have been read to the Club. A little more material is in hand, but with its use, the work of a very notable local historian will come to an end at last.
W.B.Kendall was one of four Barrow antiquaries of more than local reputation who, in overlapping sequence, served the B.N.F.C. and the cause of historical knowledge for nearly seventy years; the others being H.G.Pearson, Harper Gaythorpe, and Paul V. Kelly. Perhaps W.B.Kendall was the most prolific writer of all, and the labour required for the purely mechanical work of setting out his results with pen and ink, is alone outstanding to contemplate. That his data is reliable may be accepted from the fact that the Editor of the Victoria County History of Lancashire and Prof. E.Ekwall ("Place Names of Lancashire"), do not hesitate to quote him. But by nature a very reserved man, his professional training and engagements tended to make him secretive, and he seems to have been reluctant to disclose his sources and authorities. There is reason to believe that, in part, this is because some of his information was supplied by word of mouth or (e.g. from solicitors), on the understanding that the source should not be mentioned; and there also appear to have been times when, having written out a paper, Mr Kendall lost interest in the matter without considering the desirability of authorising his statements for the benefit of future generation. Thus his work, while of immense value, could have been made even more so, and the lack of quoted sources and authorities now presents great difficulties in using it, which increases as time passes.
J.L.H.May, 1946
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