Haystacks, in the foreground: Wainwright's final resting place

A statue of Cumbria’s most famous recent chronicler of the area’s fells is due to grace the town that was his home for many years.

A bronze effigy of Alfred Wainwright, author of the famed Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, is to be commissioned at an estimated cost of £80,000 to be placed in Kendal, the former Westmorland town where the Grumpy Old Fellwalker was borough treasurer.

Sculptor Graham Ibbeson, best known for the statue of Eric Morecambe that adorns the Lancashire town from which he took his name, will create the figure.

The project is supported by his family and the Wainwright Society, guardians of the fellwalker’s memory, though there is doubt as to whether the reclusive detailer of the fells and instigator of the Coast to Coast Walk, would approve.

Wainwright, who died aged 84 in 1991, was born in Blackburn. His love of the Lake District was spawned by an early trip to Windermere and he spent almost all his spare time walking the 214 fells described in his books, writing up the routes and producing the intricate hand-drawn illustrations which lend his work a unique quality.

Notoriously anti-social – he admitted to pretending to be urinating away from the mountain paths if he met a fellow hillwalker he did not want to converse with – he nevertheless produced works imbued with a dry humour and meticulously researched detail.

His ashes are scattered  at Innominate Tarn on Haystacks, the fell he said was his favourite Lakeland mountain. There is a memorial tablet to the writer in St James’s Church in  Buttermere, below the fell.

Another famous son of Kendal is historian David Starkey. Postman Pat creator John Cunliffe also lived in the town for a time and the fictional valley of Greendale is said to be based on nearby Longsleddale. Joseph Wiper came up with the sweet confection that was to become known to many fellwalkers as Kendal Mint Cake.

The town’s present-day tourist information centre was Wainwright’s office when he was borough treasurer between 1947 and 1967.