His father was a stonemason, often unemployed. His mother was hardworking and god-fearing and raised him, along with his brother and two sisters, decently, but in somewhat poverty-stricken conditions. They lived in a small cottage with no garden and no indoor bathroom.
He did very well at school, coming top of the class in most subjects, but left to earn his keep as an office boy in Blackburn Borough Engineer's Department.
This enabled him to escape Blackburn and move to Kendal in 1941 when he took a job as an Accountancy Assistant at Kendal Borough Treasurer's Office. He went on to become Borough Treasurer in 1948, remaining in this position until he retired in 1967.
Over the next 13 years he spent his weekends walking, collecting information in notebooks and in annotations on maps. His evenings were spent drawing detailed maps, diagrams and landscape views. These diagrams were compiled into the finished pages, along with his hand-written text, and published as A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells. For this labour of love he was awarded the MBE.