Kerr bookshop: A memory of Kendal

Kerr Bookshop

A Memory of Kendal.

Ewen Kerr opened a secondhand bookshop in New Sambles, sometime during the early years of World War II. I remember selling him some of my children's books (I now much regret that I did not keep them; I was only 17 at the time) and buying a splendidly, decoratively bound copy of Agness Zimmermann's edition of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. It cost, I think, 2s.6d. (c.12.5 p.) and I still have it. Later Ewen's son took the business over & moved to another Kendal location, then to Cartmel.

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Added 13 March 2012

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My roots in Kendal go very deep indeed, my Great Grandfather was James Dawson Garnett who was born there in 1851 on Lake Road and married Elizabeth Sherrin a local girl in 1871. Their son James Langhorn Garnett was my Grandfather who moved to Middlesborough then South Shields and retired there as a local policeman. He then moved to Durham City and ran several pubs there called the Angel Inn in Crossgate and The Wheatsheaf in Claypath.
My great grandfather left Kendal in 1897 and ran the Brookside Inn at Windemere then moved to Scarborough in 1901 to run the Carlton Hotel. In 1903 they emigrated to Fresno, California where they had purchased 70 acres, where they died in 1933. I have lived in California since 1967 and only learned this about my great grandfather recently, it truly is a small world. Additionally I have learned that my 11th great grandfather was Thomas Garnett who was born in Kirkby Lonsdale to Anthony & Susan Garnett of Castle Dairy in Kendal in 1858.
Thomas Garnett was notable as one of the passengers on the good ship Swann in 1610 that landed and founded the Jamestown settlement in Virginia an early US pioneer.

By Rob Beilby on Mon Jan 19th 2015, at 11:22 pm

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