Guisborough Grammar School Howick Camp

Guisborough Grammar School Boy Scouts enjoy halcyon days at a Howick campsite before the start of World War Two.

The Second World War is just weeks away when sleepy scouts from Guisborough Grammar School wake up at their campsite near Howick, Northumberland. The resourceful boys practice traditional woodcraft skills: lighting fires, using axes, cooking in billy cans, and tying useful knots for rescuing the injured. All too soon, it’s time to catch the train home at Little Mills, once the private station of the renowned Grey family of Howick Hall.

This was the troop’s last outing until the end of World War Two. In December 1939 the school magazine, The Guisborian, reported on their practice air raid warnings, black-out curtains, National Savings Stamps scheme, and disrupted football matches and boxing contests. Several members of the school scout troop ‘had commenced to “dig for victory”, and for cabbages’ as the British Ministry of Agriculture urged civilians in a home front propaganda campaign. Guisborough Grammar School was originally founded in 1561 by Robert Pursglove, the last Prior of Gisborough Priory, as a free school for the sons of local farmers and tradesmen of Cleveland, a tradition that continued into the 20th century.