A WOMAN who was a regular contributor to the Gazette's nostalgia page and a key member of Kendal Oral History Group has died, aged 80.

Joan Humphreys was also co-author of the 2005 book ‘It Were Like This, Me Lass!’ - put together from the many interviews collected by Kendal Oral History Group.

Mrs Humphreys was born on April 29, 1934 at Preston Patrick, where she attended the village primary school before going to Queen Elizabeth School in Kirkby Lonsdale.

She worked all her life at Provincial Insurance in Kendal and became a private secretary.

She married her late husband, Colin, in 1960 and lived in Kendal with their three sons, David, John and Michael.

From its inception, Mrs Humphreys became a key member of Kendal Oral History Group, which has been collecting people’s recollections of events in their lifetime on tapes since 1987. She carefully listened to the taped interviews and painstakingly transcribed them word for word, so they could be retained for posterity together for future generations to enjoy. These are still kept today at Kendal Library. It is only in recent years that she stepped down.

Mrs Humphreys was also involved in Talking Newspapers when her father became blind – and excerpts from The Westmorland Gazette are sent out to the blind and partially-sighted.

In the last few years she helped delivering library books to the housebound.

She also joined a Creative Writing Group and when they had no place to meet welcomed them into her own home. She wrote and had printed ‘Tales from a Restless Pen’, a selection of stories and poems she gifted to friends. She contributed articles based on her childhood memories to the nostalgia section of The Westmorland Gazette.

In a Gazette interview in 2005, when ‘It Were Like This, Me Lass!’ was launched, she said: "It is the small tales like these that is important to preserve on the printed page. The book is full of real characters, as you can tell. But it is the little bits of things that make the book so special.

"The big events are always registered somewhere but the little snippets get lost, which is why the Oral History Group feels it is so important to record them."

Mrs Humphreys died peacefully in her sleep at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary after a short illness.