Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 19698 (Master Record)
Title | Year | Date |
BOY SCOUT CAMP GOSFORTH PARK. OFFICIAL OPENING 1ST MAY 1932 BY LORD BADEN-POWELL | 1932 | 1932-01-01 |
Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 19 mins 15 secs Genre: Amateur Subject: Education |
Summary Amateur film of the official opening of Gosforth Park Scout Camping and Training Ground in Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1932, by Lord Baden-Powell. Footage includes inspection of the camp, the march past of thousands of guides and scouts at a huge rally, and scenes of activities at the camp after the opening. |
Description
Amateur film of the official opening of Gosforth Park Scout Camping and Training Ground in Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1932, by Lord Baden-Powell. Footage includes inspection of the camp, the march past of thousands of guides and scouts at a huge rally, and scenes of activities at the camp after the opening.
Title: Boy Scout Camp Gosforth Park. Official Opening 1st May 1932
Title: By Lord Baden-Powell The Founder of the Movement
Title: George M. Carter Who Made The Camp Possible
The film...
Amateur film of the official opening of Gosforth Park Scout Camping and Training Ground in Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1932, by Lord Baden-Powell. Footage includes inspection of the camp, the march past of thousands of guides and scouts at a huge rally, and scenes of activities at the camp after the opening.
Title: Boy Scout Camp Gosforth Park. Official Opening 1st May 1932
Title: By Lord Baden-Powell The Founder of the Movement
Title: George M. Carter Who Made The Camp Possible
The film opens with a still photograph of George M. Carter with cine camera.
Various shots record the arrival of Lord Baden-Powell at Gosforth Park, greeted by officials.
Baden-Powell and scout leaders, accompanied by a very young boy scout or cub scout, arrive at the entrance to the camp. The group walk through the park and are then greeted by more scout leaders. The event is being filmed by another scout master.
A walkabout through the camp with scout leaders follows. Scouts form a guard of honour as Baden-Powell walks through to a camp building. He unlocks the door as part of the opening ceremony. He exits the building and shakes the hand of the young boy scout.
The next scenes follow inspection of camp tents and the kit laid out on the grass. Baden-Powell attempts to cut the ribbon to a camp enclosure, and has a little trouble.
Scout groups stand to attention holding the flags of their respective groups in a military-style parade. Groups include girl guides.
Baden-Powell, official guests and scout leaders arrive at the huge rally at Gosforth Park Racecourse with spectators filling stands beside the parade route.
Title: The March Past Thousands of Scouts
Baden-Powell takes the salute as thousands of scouts parade past his podium. Various shots and close-ups of Baden-Powell and the marching scouts follow. A large crowd watches the parade.
Baden-Powell shakes hands with girl guide leaders. He accompanies one of the leaders on an inspection of guide troops. There are various portrait shots of the young women in uniform posing for the camera.
A line of scout and guide leaders salute to camera in the parade ground. Crowds of exuberant guides and scouts wave their hats and cheer to camera.
Baden-Powell and scout leaders walk past the crowds in the stands and shots of the crowd follow.
Scout leaders and official guests pose for a group portrait, with crowd pictured in background.
Baden-Powell addresses the rally from a stage. There are various shots of the speech and crowd. The crowd claps the speech. They then begin to disperse.
Title: Scenes In The Camp After The Opening
The next sequence records activities in the camp. Two scouts saw wood. There are general shots of the camp in woods, the lighting of camp fires, washing outdoors, cooking on fires, building fence, fanning the fires, erecting a gateway, a sign above a gateway that reads "Service Before Self." Scouts and guides light fires.
A group of four young girl guides pose for a portrait.
A sign reads "Training ground. Private."
A ring of thirty or so teenage girl guides perform a dance and other strange rituals in the woods.
Guides and scouts are writing and studying with a scout leader in the campsite.
Scouts and guides gather branches and chop wood.
A scout bandages the finger of a girl guide, with a close up of the bandaging of the finger. The accident is recorded in a log book outside the first aid tent.
Various shots around the camp site, which include a close-up of the scout emblem carved in a hand-crafted log chair.
Title: A Visit By The Prince of Wales Before The Camp Was Opened
A still photograph of the Prince of Wales and scout leaders.
Context
On 22 February Scouts’ associations across the world celebrate Founder’s Day, the birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, born in 1857 and a lieutenant-general in the British Army during the Second Boer War in South Africa, the founder of the Scout Movement.
Baden-Powell was in Newcastle upon Tyne on 1 May 1932 to officially open the Gosforth Park Scout Training Camp, where, he noted approvingly in a letter to the Northumberland Scouts County Commissioner Sir Ralph Mortimer, the boys could practise...
On 22 February Scouts’ associations across the world celebrate Founder’s Day, the birthday of Robert Baden-Powell, born in 1857 and a lieutenant-general in the British Army during the Second Boer War in South Africa, the founder of the Scout Movement.
Baden-Powell was in Newcastle upon Tyne on 1 May 1932 to officially open the Gosforth Park Scout Training Camp, where, he noted approvingly in a letter to the Northumberland Scouts County Commissioner Sir Ralph Mortimer, the boys could practise woodcraft and pioneering “under actual backwoods conditions” and hoped that “parlour scouting” would be a thing of the past in Newcastle. George Carter was the Assistant Commissioner for the Newcastle Rovers (scouts in their early 20s) and was in charge of the camp, which covered an impressive 43 acres of the park. John William ‘Jack’ Dorgan, a former pit pony driver at Ashington Colliery and British NCO serving with the 7th Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers on the Western Front during World War I, was the Camp Chief. Baden-Powell got a big welcome from the North East’s Boy and Girl Scouts troops as thousands attended an hour long militaristic march-past at Gosforth Park Racecourse – certainly a Grand Howl for the ageing Chief Scout. Baden-Powell noticed that many boys in troops at the rally were too “under-age or physically unfit to stand the work of minor hardship” and worried that small boys would strain to keep pace with the bigger ones, and should have been in Cub Scout packs. But with a nod to the Depression in 1930s Britain, he celebrated the opportunity “to bring the poorer boys under good influences in this critical time for them when, under the cloud of unemployment, hundreds of them are lapsing into unemployableness [sic] and crime.” A newspaper called the training camp a “Boy’s Paradise” but a fair few Girl Guides were practising their survival skills in the Gosforth Park woods as seen in this film. The girls also wanted in on the act. Early unofficial “Girl Scouts” self-styled themselves into patrols with names like the “Wildcats” or “Nighthawks”. Along with his sister Agnes, Baden-Powell’s wife Olave, with a birthday coincidentally on the same date as her husband, helped to develop the Girl Scout movement and later became Chief Guide. She later recalled in her autobiography Window on My Heart: “When the Scouts held their first big Rally at the Crystal Palace in 1909, the “Girl Scouts” turned up [two dozen or so amongst 11,000 boys at the rally] and demanded to be inspected by my husband. So he decided to organise them into a sister movement which he called “Girl Guides”. To his credit, Baden-Powell first stated in the Headquarters Gazette that "Girls must be partners and comrades rather than dolls." Yet, he mildly capitulated to Establishment (and his sister and mother's) concerns that toughness should not be a quality that applied equally to the girls. The Girl Guides, for their part, enjoyed the chance to escape restrictive, rule-bound home lives and embrace the outdoor life. References: Baden-Powell: Founder of the Boy Scouts, Tim Jeal (Yale University Press, 2001) https://www.tynemouthscouts.org.uk/tynemouth-scouts-district-history/ https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/gosforth-scout-camp-newcastle-nov-13.85857/ |