Robin Barratt  fell in love with the lake district when he worked at Keswick School in the nineteen sixties. Later, whilst working at an outdoor centre at Howtown, Ullswater, he and some of his colleagues started an environmental study group to help people working in the outdoors to become more conscious of their own responsibility to the countryside. 

Rodney Key was born in Brockstones Farm, Kentmere in 1933 where his father was a farm manager. In 1942 the family moved to Brunt Knott farm where Rodney worked alongside his father for several years. He remembers the hard winter of 1947.

Born in  October 1921 in Carlisle, early schooling in Devonport, then returned to Carlisle and attended Robert Ferguson School. Ron’s father was a Chief Petty Officer whose work took him to the far east.
Ron’s first venture into the Lakes was with a scout group to camp near Braithwaite, his chief memory was of the views from the top of Grisedale Pike.

As a child, Stephen spent many holidays in Hartsop and later moved there permanently. He remembers how the land used to be farmed, using traditional methods, and the types of birds and flowers that used to be found in the hay meadows.

Ted Bowness was born in 1928 in a tiny stone cottage in Great Langdale. He remembers an idyllic childhood in the area, looking for birds nests, helping with the farming tasks of the day and taking part in the village festivities throughout the year.

Born in the family cottage at Crosby Fell in 1925, Ted’s perspective on the changes he’s witnessed in the landscape have made a fascinating contribution to the High Fells Project. From changing farming practise to the great motorway construction of the 70’s, Ted has seen the way the impact of human efforts affect the high wild place he has lived in all his life.

Wilson Robinson was born in 1916, and witnessed many changes in his long farming career. He started farming when he was a boy, helping around the family farm, and later bought his own farm among the hills of Westmorland just before VE Day in 1945.