Extract and information from
Brownsea Island by Bernard C. Short
(published 1963)
‘In 1907, at a time when Charles Van Raalte was away from Brownsea, Mrs Florence Van Raalte permitted one of her daughter’s friends, Robert Baden-Powell, to come to Brownsea and hold a camp there for about twenty boys. Baden-Powell was assisted in this venture by two of his friends, Major Maclaren and Sir Arthur Pearson. The camp lasted for ten days, and was attended by three boys from Poole, three boys from Bournemouth and fourteen boys from Eton and Harrow, one of whom was Baden-Powell’s own nephew, Robert Baden-Powell.
The boys were divided into four patrols. Baden-Powell taught them educative games which helped the boys to develop their powers of observation and initiative. They learnt how to cook in the open, and in the evening Baden-Powell would tell them stories about the Boer War, and teach them songs by the glow of the camp fire. Thus it was that the Boy Scout movement was born on Brownsea Island.’
In 1908 Charkes Van Raalte died of pneumonia and the Island passed to his son. It was then sold in 1925 to a Sir Arthur Wheeler but both Poole Town Council and Dorset County Council turned down his ideas for a tourist hotel on the island. Later, Sir Arthur Wheeler went bankrupt and Brownsea was bought by Mrs Florence Christie in 1927.
Mrs Christie slowly transformed Brownsea into an island of forbidden territory. In 1932 she gave permission for 500 Scouts to land there and celebrate the jubilee of their movement.
Mrs Christie was determined to keep the island as a clandestine garden, overgrown and undisturbed that nature may ‘possess it merely’.
The peacefulness of the island was briefly broken by World War II. After the war, life on Brownsea Island once again remained undisturbed.
Mrs Christie died in 1961 and the island passed to her grandson who handed it over to the Treasury in May 1962 as payment for death duties. In their turn, the Treasury presented the island to the National Trust and it remains in their possession to this day.
‘The birds and blossoms which have thrived upon the islands serene privacy continue to do so. Although visitors from the mainland are allowed onto Brownsea they will never be permitted to disturb that inner life of the island, where man is but a rash, unwanted intruder.’