Girlguiding Stevenage - girls in the lead

On 13th March Rainbows, Brownies and Guides from the Pin Green District travelled to London for the day to visit the centenary maze at Crystal Palace. The maze has been built especially to celebrate the centenary year of Girlguiding.

There are important historical connections between the Girl Guides and Crystal Palace Park, because it was at a Scouts’ Rally in the park on 4 September 1909 that a small group of girls dared to attend and approach Sir Robert Baden-Powell, requesting that he set up ‘something for the girls’. Baden-Powell founded the Girl Guides a few months later.

The Brownies then visited the Monument. The monument was built between 1671 and 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire of London and to celebrate the rebuilding of the City. As part of the rebuilding, it was decided to erect a permanent memorial of the Great Fire near the place where it began. Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor General to King Charles II and the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, and his friend and colleague, Dr Robert Hooke, provided a design for a colossal Doric column in the antique tradition. They drew up plans for a column containing a cantilevered stone staircase of 311 steps leading to a viewing platform. This was surmounted by a drum and a copper urn from which flames emerged, symbolising the Great Fire. The Monument, as it came to be called, is 61 metres high (202 feet) - the exact distance between it and the site in Pudding Lane where the fire began.