A power cut on the busiest shopping day of the week affected both businesses and residents in Kendal.

Last Friday night electricity was cut off to premises on and around Stricklandgate and not entirely restored until lunchtime on Saturday.

Traders could not open and had to turn business away.

Alan Green, who was on duty at Elephant Yard, said shoppers appeared confused that half the town was open and half was closed.

He said most of the shops between Market Place and Stricklandgate's junction with Sandes Avenue had to close.

"I'm sure traders were rather peeved," he said. "I'm sure there will be a lot of wages gone to waste - it's not just trade that's lost."

Peter Thornton, owner of Quick Snaps, on Blackhall Yard, said: "It affected us greatly. It probably cost me about £500.

"We obviously could not do any work without power and when the power came back on at one o'clock, our machines had to heat up again. We lost most of the day."

Despite the problems, he praised the hard work of the workmen who came to tackle the power cut.

Kendal Library opened as usual on Saturday morning but without any power.

But librarian Alicia Wood said they had to evict the bookworms at 11.30am: "We thought it was rather dangerous for the public, since it was wet as well."

The library reopened at 1.30pm.

The Westmorland Shopping Centre could not open on time and it soon became clear that the management faced a second problem.

Operations manager Martin Pickering said a safety feature of the centre's smoke vents meant that when the power failed the vents opened, allowing Saturday's heavy rain to pour in.

"The floor was like a skating rink," he said, adding extra cleaning staff had to be drafted in and the water damaged a ceiling.

Not every shop affected by the power cut had to close. Pat Madison, of Marks and Spencer, said the store's generator kicked in a few seconds after the power cut.

The only effect, she said, was that the fresh food was put out later than usual as the lift to the food store could not be powered by the generator.

Power company United Utilities spokesman Helen Lord said: "When we located the fault, we found the cables lay alongside a gas pipe deep in concrete.

"We then had to switch additional people off to secure supplies for safety reasons. At 2.57am, additional supplies went off as engineers continued to dig through the night and at 7.37am a number of customers went back on."

She said businesses were "extremely cooperative" and understood what the firm was doing.

The reason she gave for the power cut was "third party damage" and refused to identify who that was.

Ulverston also experienced phone disruptions as repairs were carried on a phone line mid-week.