Kendal

The Parrs did not hold their castle long. By Catherine Parr's day it had already fallen into disrepair, and in 1566 the Crown confiscated the family's properties, Kendal Castle among them. The town's fortune lay in its cloth instead. Kendal Green, a hard-wearing woollen fabric particular to the local looms, was said to have been worn by the Kendal archers at Agincourt, and Shakespeare named it in Henry IV as the dress of foresters. The town grew along a single high street, with narrow alleys known locally as yards running off on either side, and it took for its arms a motto that said it plainly: Pannus mihi panis, 'Cloth is my bread'.