Express & Star

Event will honour inspirational Long Mynd camp founder

The inspirational founder of a Shropshire adventure camp which gave holidays in the countryside for deprived boys from the West Midlands is being remembered with the unveiling of a bench in his honour.

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Bill Williams joins in the fun with some of the boys on the August 1977 camp

And those youngsters – now in their 50s, 60s, and 70s – are being invited along to the ceremony to recreate the magic of those times and play some of the old camp games.

"Basically we will become children again," said Alan Scriven, whose 33-year association with the Longmynd Adventure Camp near Church Stretton began in 1965 as a schoolboy from an impoverished background in Wolverhampton.

The event on June 29 will see the bench unveiled in the memory of Bill Williams, the rural police constable who held the first ever camp in 1958 in the garden of his home at Wistanstow, near Craven Arms.

Gratitude

The first camp in the foothills of the Long Mynd was the following year, and it moved several times before settling at the current site at Hamperley.

"We want to take this opportunity to show our gratitude and respect for what he achieved. He deserves it. That man was a father figure to me for 30-odd years.

"I think it's a fitting tribute to Bill, who died in 2013 aged 87," said Alan, who succeeded Bill as the "skipper" in charge of the camp.

The bench is likely to be sited near the main building – in Alan's days it was all tents – of the current camp.

The bench which will be unveiled in the shadow of the Long Mynd

Alan, who has recently moved from Wolverhampton to Penkridge, said that a group of about 15 or 16 of the former campers had got together to celebrate its 60th anniversary last year, and had since been meeting monthly at the Ragleth Inn, Little Stretton.

There was, he said, already a memorial bench for Barrie Gretton, the camp chairman.

"I thought it only right and proper, especially with it being the anniversary, to get Bill a memorial bench. We approached the current committee, and they were all for it."

He says the refurbished wooden bench has been provided by Bill's daughter, Debbie Bridge, from Shrewsbury and another daughter, Ann Lewis of Harmer Hill, has arranged the plaques.

Unveiling

The unveiling will be between 2pm and 3pm and Alan, nicknamed "Scriv" in his camping days, said: "We would like to extend the invitation to everybody who has been connected to the Longmynd Adventure Camp. We will have a raffle, and weather permitting we will play some of the old camp games that we all remember."

The unveiling – the exact form of the ceremony has not yet been decided – is being performed by Bishop Richard Lewis, who helped out Bill and is also a close friend of the Williams family.

The Longmynd Adventure Camp – in its title, Long Mynd is spelt as one word – began aimed at boys aged 11 to 14 and was originally called The WVS (Women’s Voluntary Services, as it was then) Boys Camp.

Its mission was to provide a camping holiday for deprived boys, mainly from the Wolverhampton and Birmingham areas, although later its catchment area broadened.

The camp gained charitable status in 1973.

Longmynd Adventure Camp continues as a charity to this day, its stated primary aim to provide free or subsidised respite breaks for disadvantaged children, especially those that have never experienced the countryside before.

The plaques on the Bill Williams bench read: "In Memory Of Bill Williams B.E.M., 1926-2013, Founder & Skipper of Longmynd Adventure Camp, 1958-1998" and separately on another plaque, with an image of Bill in between, "Whose time and commitment helped so many socially deprived boys by creating holidays & memories. Love light and peace."