Girl Guiding: a cultural history An independent history
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Essay

Girls and the outdoors

Camping, hiking and fresh air were at the heart of Guiding's appeal. They were also managed, costly and not open to everyone equally.

A boys’ model, adapted

Guiding’s outdoor life came from Scouting, and Scouting’s came from a boys’ camp. At Brownsea Island in August 1907 around twenty boys spent a week in patrols, learning tracking, first aid, knots and life-saving, with stories round the fire.[1] When the first Guide handbook appeared in 1912 it kept stalking, tracking, signalling and camping from Scouting for Boys.[2]

Interpretation For girls, this was a real change. Outdoor adventure was not something most girls of the time were encouraged to do. Critics of the time are reported to have called “girl scouting” a “foolish and pernicious movement”,[13] though we have not yet traced those words to a source of the time. Whatever the exact words, the objection shows how new it was for girls to camp.

Freedom with rules

Camping in Guiding was never simply freedom. Camps needed trained adults and permissions, and came with rules about behaviour and dress. The 1912 handbook tied outdoor skills to a purpose: Michelle J. Smith shows how it linked girls’ new freedoms to the defence of the home and to life in the colonies.[3]

Interpretation Both things were true at once. Girls learned to pitch tents, cook over fires and lead a patrol at camp; they did so inside a programme designed by adults, for adult purposes. Many members’ memories of camp are of independence and friendship. Both the rules and the memories are part of the history.

Who could go?

Camp cost money: for equipment, travel, food and, often, uniform. Not every family could pay. Where you lived mattered too: a rural company might camp in a nearby field, while a city company had to travel. And camps were rarely designed with disabled girls in mind.

Grace Chapman’s research on disabled children in Scouting and Guiding in the north of England, 1907–1970, is the best starting point for that last question.[6] How far other barriers (of class, and of ideas about who “belonged” in the countryside) kept girls away from camp is still to be researched, and we do not yet have the evidence to say how large they were.

International camps

Camping also carried Guiding abroad. In 1924 the first World Camp, at Foxlease in Hampshire, brought together 1,100 girls and young women from 40 countries.[5] In 1932 Our Chalet opened in the Swiss Alps as the first World Centre, paid for by the American Guider Helen Storrow.[4]

Interpretation That Our Chalet depended on one wealthy benefactor is a reminder that international Guiding was, for many members, something they heard about rather than experienced.

Skills put to use

Camp skills could be put to serious use. The Guide International Service, set up in 1942, trained volunteers to work in relief camps after the war.[12] A folding water bucket in the Norfolk archive was used in their training and then on the expeditions: an ordinary piece of camp kit carried into displaced persons’ camps.[14]

From woodcraft to climate

Ideas about nature changed over the century, from woodcraft and self-sufficiency to conservation and, now, climate action. Sian Edwards has studied how the Girl Guides Association took up conservation and environmental citizenship between 1986 and 1992.[7]

The end of the national centres

In May 2023 Girlguiding’s trustees recommended selling its five national activity centres: Blackland Farm, Foxlease, Glenbrook, Waddow Hall and Ynysgain. The organisation said fewer than 10% of members had used them in the previous decade and that they would need more than £20 million of investment.[8] Many members objected, and the sale was debated in Parliament that September.[11] The centres closed at the end of 2023, and the last of them, Ynysgain, was sold in May 2026.[9][10]

Interpretation The sale raises the same question as the rest of this essay: who gets to go outdoors, and who pays for it? Whether it widened or narrowed access to the outdoors for today’s members is too soon to judge.

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Sources

  1. “The Brownsea boys”, Dorset Life - The Dorset Magazine, 2017-08. Accessed 25 September 2026.
  2. Katherine Magyarody, “Odd Woman, Odd Girls: Reconsidering How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire: The Handbook for Girl Guides and Early Guiding Practices, 1909–1918”, Children's Literature Association Quarterly 41, no. 3, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016, pp. 238–262.
  3. Michelle J. Smith, “Be(ing) Prepared: Girl Guides, Colonial Life, and National Strength”, Empire in British Girls' Literature and Culture: Imperial Girls, 1880–1915, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 133–158.
  4. WAGGGS World Centres, “Story of Our Chalet”, WAGGGS. Accessed 25 September 2026.
  5. World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, “Our history”, WAGGGS. Accessed 25 September 2026.
  6. Grace Chapman, 'Handicapped': Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, and the Provision of Youth Movement Activities for Disabled Children in the North of England, 1907–1970, University of Huddersfield (doctoral thesis), 2022.
  7. Sian Edwards, “'Are you a green Guide?' Conservation, environmentalism, and citizenship in the British Girl Guides Association, 1986–1992”, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 29, no. 6, 2022, pp. 978–1001.
  8. Girlguiding, “An important announcement about our activity centres”, 2023-05-18. Accessed 25 September 2026.
  9. Girlguiding, “Update on Ynysgain activity centre”, 2026-05-19.
  10. Civil Society News, “Girlguiding sells last of five former activity centres”, 2026-05-27.
  11. UK Parliament, “Youth Programmes and Girlguiding (Westminster Hall debate)”, House of Commons Hansard, vol. 737, 2023-09-19, pp. 504WH–512WH. Accessed 25 September 2026. Westminster Hall debate opened by Dame Caroline Dinenage; the Minister, Stuart Andrew, responded.
  12. Girlguiding, “Remembering the Guide International Service on VE Day 2025”, 2025-05. Accessed 25 September 2026.
  13. Scotland's War, “Guides and MI5”. Accessed 25 September 2026. Community history site (now offline; archived copy). Quotes an MI5 document, "Duties of H Branch", found during the MI5 and Girlguiding centenary research.
  14. Girlguiding Norfolk Archive Resource Centre (via MyLearning), “Girl Guide Camping Water Bucket”, MyLearning. Accessed 25 September 2026. Image © Girlguiding Norfolk County Archive Resource Centre, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.