The Barlby & Osgodby Rainbows and Brownies recently asked if we could help the Groups with their Local History Badge. We met with Brown Owl in the Selby Garden Centre for a chat so to see how we could help.
On Thursday 26 June, Jan and Shirley joined the Rainbows who also brought along their teddy bears for a short walk round the village. The teddy bears obviously got tired and spent most of the walk in the bag of Brown Owl or carried by the adults in the group.
When we stopped opposite the Selby Garden Centre everyone was enthused to tell us they had visited to see Father Christmas and his Reindeers. There was a brief distraction of unexpected excitement.. Someone had spotted the “Red Bull” car parked in Kay Drive!! Not exactly local history, but who knows in the future it may become part of our “village history”! As the quote says “History is the ship carrying living memories to the future” (Stephen Spender)
As we walked down the Public Right of Way from Bennymoor to South Duffield Road, a little voice asked “why do we have lots of fields”? After explaining the farming heritage of the village, in a way that would hopefully be fun and interesting, the response was “but we don’t need fields because we buy our bread and cakes from the supermarket”!
As we approached the duck pond everyone was squealing “are we going to the playing-field?” The ducks quickly swam to the far side of the pond, perhaps overwhelmed by the amount of people descending on their home, together with the loud joys of an impending visit to the playing field. Sadly this soon turned to disappointment when we explained we would not be going onto the playing field, and Brown Owl had to promise a visit another day.
When we got to the end of Sand Lane and looked across to the Wadkin Arms – everyone seemed to have visited the pub. This was followed by everyone telling us how they had been in the Institute to birthday parties.
As we arrived back at the Methodist Church, Jan had been given acorns, and Shirley stones as presents. Teddies returned and thanks said it was time to take the Brownies.
Wanting to avoid the distraction of the “Red Bull car”, we stopped a little further up the road, however, we failed miserably as the utterings of “is the Red Bull car there” started to build from the back of the group to the front, and someone rushed to look round the corner and shouted “yes, it’s there”!
The Group, being a little older than the Rainbows, were given a little history about the Garden Centre. Asked to guess how had Bennymoor got it’s name. At the pond, we talked about Mary Ward, and to put her legacy into context today was described as promoting “girl power” – which brought a huge response of understanding. Again, everyone had been to the Wadkin and the Village Institute.
All in all an enjoyable evening. We volunteered to visit a meeting when they were doing their tasks they had to do following the walk.