Undaunted: Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth

A new biography honouring the legacy of philanthropist Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth has been penned by Jane Hellebrand, a long-time volunteer with the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection and former Assistant Curator. Undaunted traces Rachel’s remarkable life—from her passionate commitment to craft and education to her groundbreaking contributions to social welfare and the Girl Guide movement. In this excerpt, we discover her pivotal role in the founding of the Girl Guides.

Rachel greatly admired the Boy Scout movement from its earliest beginnings in 1909, approving and welcoming the emphasis on public service and discipline. In 1916 the founder, Robert Baden-Powell, together with his sister Agnes, recognised that a similar organisation for girls was needed and the Girl Guide movement was formed.

Rachel was appointed the North East Lancashire County Commissioner at a Guide conference in Matlock in October 1916. This marked the beginning of a thirty-one-year involvement with the Girl Guides and the start of many lifelong friendships.

Rachel proposed that the Guiding counties, districts and companies should have their own standards as a means of identification, which could then be carried at rallies and in processions, in the way that banners were paraded by societies, unions and associations. However, as ‘standards’ rather than just banners, their design had to meet the strict guidelines of the College of Arms. Rachel’s expert needlework skills, together with her lifelong interest in coats-of-arms and heraldry, meant that she was ideally suited to serve as the first Girl Guides’ Heraldry Adviser, from 1925 to 1947, designing county badges and overseeing the making of official standards for all companies throughout the country.

In 1922, Rachel organised the design and making of the very first Guide standard as a wedding gift for Mary, the Princess Royal on her marriage to Viscount Lascelles, later the Earl of Harewood. The Princess Royal had recently been appointed as Honorary President of the Guides in 1920 – a position she held until her death in 1965. Rachel spoke of staying up until 3 am the night before the wedding in order to complete the standard, and she was very proud to personally carry it at the wedding service in Westminster Abbey. The original designs by Geoffrey Webb are still in the Collection.

The Princess Royal’s standard was judged to be such a success that it was decided to honour Lady Baden-Powell, the Chief Guide, with her own standard in 1925. It would travel all over the world with her and it is now kept at Guiding UK Headquarters in London.

The next standard to be supervised by Rachel was the one for North East Lancashire. As she was the County Commissioner, it was also her own standard, so it features the Kay-Shuttleworth motto ‘Kynd Kynn Knawne Kep’ – ‘Be Faithful to Old Friends’.

When the standard was dedicated in November 1936, the Burnley Express reported:

Miss Kay-Shuttleworth said that the standard should inspire them to strive towards perfection and to do even the least things as well as they could. She hoped that the movement would go forward with renewed vigour under a flag which symbolised their promises. They should dare to be loyal and true Guides. (Burnley Express, 18 November 1936) 

Rachel was also responsible for designing and organising the stitching of one of the most popular pieces in the Collection, the 1923 Girl Guides sampler (Item 6760, GTC).

Designed by Rachel, this was made by the Guides and Brownies of North East Lancashire for Helen Taylor when she retired from the post of County Secretary. The girls all put in at least one stitch, creating a unique piece of communal embroidery.

Rachel was the Chair of the Committee in 1927 which successfully negotiated the purchase of Waddow Hall, near Clitheroe, which became the Northern England Girl Guide Training Centre for more than ninety-five years. Her obituary in The Guider of June 1967 said that ‘Waddow owes its existence as a Training Centre to her and her fellow northern County Commissioners’. Sadly, Waddow has recently been sold and the long association with the Girl Guides has ended.

Rachel stressed the positive social influence of the Guides and the Scouts in a speech in 1928, given to the mothers at the Infant Welfare Centre in Burnley:

Miss Shuttleworth alluded to the Boy Scout and Girl Guide movements, the members of which, though only children at present, would very soon be the men and women of the country. She described how the Girl Guides were trained in health matters and taught to be useful homemakers of the future. ‘These two movements are doing a great deal for the health of the nation, and the health of the nation means the wealth and prosperity and future of the nation. We cannot be a great nation unless we are able to pull our weight, and we cannot do that if we are handicapped by sickness and disease.’ (Burnley News, 13 October 1928)

By the time Rachel retired as County Commissioner in 1947, there were thousands of Girl Guides in North East Lancashire. Rachel was never just a figurehead but took part wholeheartedly in all guiding activities. She encouraged the Guides to hold rallies and pageants at Gawthorpe, to make camps in the walled garden and to use the grounds for their activities, even after her retirement.

In 1949 the standard of the Chief Commissioner, or St George standard, was finally dedicated at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the presence of HRH The Princess Royal and Lady Baden-Powell. The Second World War had greatly delayed the completion of this standard as it was originally started in 1936.

For twenty-two years, Rachel’s Assistant Commissioner was Miss Annie Schofield Clegg of Colne. Their long-standing friendship survived the passing years and became a mainstay of support in Rachel’s life. Once they had both retired from the Guides in 1947, Annie worked tirelessly to help Rachel achieve her dream of a Craft House.

The Girl Guides were a major part of Rachel’s adult life and provided her with a deep sense of achievement and fulfilment. She also made many lifelong friends, who would form a network providing her with practical help and support for her Craft House ambitions.

Time and again, our research into donors to the Collection has revealed a previously unknown Girl Guide connection, and the official minutes of the Gawthorpe Foundation meetings contain numerous thanks to the many people she knew through the Guides.

Undaunted. The new biography of Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth. £14.50. Available here. 

NorthernLife June/July/Aug 25