The First Easingwold Girl Guides

The Guides movement has attracted thousands of young girls over the years and in Easingwold the movement started in 1925. The first “Guide Captain” was Mrs Iris Constable and this diary was kept by her and taken by her to Shanklin when she moved to the Isle of Wight. In the mid 1960s she sent it back to her old home town and after her death it was published. The diary records a gentle way of life and visits by Brown Owls from neighbouring areas, fund raising for “the hut” and meetings at the Mowbray Cafe. The year built up to the “joint camp” held at Robin Hood’s Bay when a participant was “Diana (now Lady) Moseley”. Diana was a Mitford and the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley [sic]. There is in the log a long description of the camp and the preparations for it (including the building and rebuilding of latrines, “not a usual thing to mention in a diary”). The “lats” blew down but all was got ready, the lats enlarged, and the camp was a great success. Fun all day from breakfast to “taps”; not even the odious Mr X (the proprietor of the site) could spoil it. The diary delightfully evokes the simple pleasures of a bygone age before “Benidorm”. The illustrations are delightful and there was at least one bizarre episode during the camp. The girls had rivals in camp nearby – Bolsheviks. They heard them singing “The Red Flag” and some were anxious to investigate but it was not to be. A Guard of Honour put a stop to that. Tawny Owl and the others stopped the Easingwold girls resorting to physical force.

ISBN 10: 0 904775 73 9

ISBN 13: 978 0 904775 73 0