Mary Landon recalls the childhood excitement of waiting for a car to drive through Tideswell so she could take down its number. She’d be busy if she tried that today.

“There wasn’t much traffic around. I could remember sitting outside the house, which is now Printer’s Cottage in Queen Street, I can remember sitting on the footpath, so I must have been under 7 but old enough to write, so I would be either 6 or 7, taking car number plates and if I got a full page of car number plates I would be thrilled to bits. You couldn’t sit down now.”