Vera Charlesworth Barclay

Vera Charlesworth Barclay co-founder of Cubs 1916, was an English pioneer of Scouting and an author. She was an early exponent of female leadership in the Scout movement and played a leading role in the introduction of the Wolf Cub programme for younger boys, both in the United Kingdom and in France. Barclay wrote numerous children's stories and instructional Scouting handbooks, and in later life wrote about her Christian faith.

Barclay was born on 10 November 1893, one of eight children of the Reverend Charles W. Barclay, a Church of England clergyman and his wife, Florence Louisa Charlesworth, a successful novelist - they were married in Stepney in Q1, 1881. The family lived in the village of Hertford Heath in Hertfordshire to the north of London, where Reverend Barclay was the vicar from 1881 to 1920. The family were frequent visitors to St Moritz in the Swiss Alps; Barclay was an enthusiastic tobogganist and one of the few females to tackle the Cresta Run, often dressed in skirts or riding jodhpurs.

Barclay returned to England before the start of World War II and lived in Felpham on the south coast from around 1938 and in 1939/1940 joined her brother, the Rev Cyril Charles Barclay (Vicar of Helmsley) with his wife Rose and daughter Mary-Rose, in a huge vicarage (now the North York Moors Trust) in the market town of Helmsley North Yorkshire, she started a small nursery school with her friend Ninette Hoffet which they ran in the vicarage, she later returned to The Midway, Felpham, long before the end of the war. After living in London and Seaview on the Isle of Wight where she began to lose her eyesight, she ended her days at Sheringham in Norfolk, being cared for by her niece Betty. She died on 19 September 1989 at St Nicholas' Nursing Home, Sheringham, and is buried in Sheringham Cemetery.