YET again a Rewind reader has come forward to solve a mystery.
A while ago we spoke to local Guiding archivist Gwen Knight, who is gathering memorabilia to help mark this year’s centenary of the Brownies.
One of the pictures she shared with us showed Brownies alongside Guides, Scouts and Cubs, but nothing was known about the image other than that it was taken in 1943 in Swindon.
Now, thanks to the Scout who is second boy from the right on the back row, we know a lot more.
He is David Lacey, an 82-year-old retired railway worker and merchant seaman from Lawn, and he revealed that the picture shows a gathering of the groups which met at the old St Paul’s Church in Edgware Road.
“I would have been 11 or 12 years old,” he said. “The photograph would have been taken before or after a church parade.
“I joined in the early 1940s.”
Mr Lacey was a member of the 51st Swindon Scout Group, which would become the 19th Swindon when it migrated to St Andrew’s in Walcot. The move was prompted by the demolition of St Paul’s to make way what became Woolworth’s.
St Paul’s was known as one of the town’s most striking churches, with an especially impressive interior. Mr Lacey remained a Scout throughout his teenage years and later became a Scout leader.
He identified the adults in the picture as Canon Harman of St Paul’s and his curate, Father Ned Carney.
There are many happy memories of the friends he made during his years in the movement, but Scouting activities during the first half of the 1940s were limited.
“We couldn’t do much because there was a war on,” he said, “but we did go camping.”