A few months ago I found an eBay listing of a large black and white photo of a Brownie pack. I instantly fell in love with the contrast of smiling brownies that were digging up a spooky grave in an old english churchyard. I wasn't really sure what was happening in the photo but wanted to test the research skills that I've been developing through writing this blog and figure out why they had the Brownies in the Graveyard.
When the photo arrived in the mail I was delighted to find that taped to the back was a newspaper information tag from Brighton's newspaper, the Evening Argus. That gave me a rough place to start looking and the 1980 uniform gave me a when to start looking. Among all the information from the tag, I think my favorite is the almost poem-like description of the pack’s activity.
“We scrubbed hard and we found worms and things.
We digged
and we found the names buried in the ground.
Then we put flowers in the grave.”
The information tag also revealed a few other clues. The pack was 1st Ovingdean Brownie which met at the St. Wulfran’s church in Brighton. The pack adopted the church's graveyard as their project for the Adopt and Cherish National Conservation Competition that ran as part of that year’s Keep Britain Tidy. That year the competition was sponsored by Lloyd Bank and I did reach out to keep Britain Tidy on Facebook to see if the pack won or not but unfortunately there just aren't many records left from this time period. At some point, the photo was lost, given away, or never returned back to the Press and Public Relations Office of the Girl Guide Association in London England, as the information tag asked for. At some point, a vintage photo seller must have gotten their hands on it and posted it for sale on eBay and that's how I found it.
I was still hoping to learn more about the photo, I figured my next step was to email the main Girlguiding archives in the UK office since their information was listed on the back. (As a Canadian, it always feels a little strange to type Girlguiding rather than Girl Guides). As it turns out their building is currently closed while they look for a new building and don’t have any digital archives available for reference. They did recommend contacting smaller archives or Guider groups instead. So I started to look up ’ Girlguiding on Facebook around the location of the church in hopes of finding a page I could connect with. I got pretty lucky and soon started to message the Girlguiding Brighton and Hove's Facebook page and they were able to confirm this was the Ovingdean Brownies. The pack used to take part every year in Keep Britain Tidy by cleaning Gravestones. They were hoping to put me in contact with one of the pack’s retired leaders but with all the covid craziness in the world, we lost touch.
St. Wulfran’s church and the graveyard still operate today and are currently under the care of Father Richard Tuset who very nicely answered some of my questions over email. The Brownies no longer help with grave cleaning but Father Tuset wanted to let everyone know that the graveyard is still very well cared for and has regular mentions. He very kindly sent along with photos of what the graves in the original photo look like today and pointed out how many daffodils were just starting to grow under the large Celtic cross. He likes to think that they are the flowers once planted by Brownies.
Special Thanks to Father Tuset and Brighton Girlguiding
Thanks for reading! -EM