A ROUGH-HEWN block of Purbeck stone stands on Evening Hill in Poole as a memorial to Lord Baden-Powell, who, 100 years ago, held the first camp on Brownsea Island that gave birth to the Scout movement.

That memorial was unveiled 40 years ago by his wife, Lady Olave Baden-Powell, not far from Crichel Mount Road in Lilliput where she had lived before her marriage.

Born in Chesterfield, Olave St Clair Soames was the daughter of a brewery owner and artist and educated by her father and mother and a number of governesses.

She was always keen on outdoor activities and lived at a large Edwardian property called Grey Rigg in Poole before marrying Baden-Powell, the hero of the Siege of Mafeking in the Boer War, whose ground-breaking camp on Brownsea involved about 20 public schoolboys and local lads from the Poole and Bournemouth Boys' Brigades.

But what of Olave?

Baden-Powell first clapped eyes on her when he noticed her in a London street and, it is said, calculated by her appearance that she would show "honesty of purpose, common sense and spirit of adventure"... but he did not introduce himself.

It was not until two years later that the couple met onboard a ship that embarked from Southampton bound for New York.

After a whirlwind shipboard romance, they married at St Peter's Church in Parkstone. The happy couple shared a birthday - he was 55 and she just 23.

Olave had come to Poole to live in 1908 but already had connections with the area.

In 1900, when 11, she and her parents lived in a hotel in Bournemouth for eight weeks, during which time she saw a production of a Shakespeare play at the Winter Gardens.

They moved to Lilliput eight years later, which her mother described as being "the desired compromise between town and country without being aggressively suburban."

In her autobiography she wrote that Lilliput was "the turning point in my life" and that barely a house existed at Sandbanks in those days.

A keen swimmer and sailor, she also learned life-saving and shunned high society life to serve the community - volunteering at a holiday convalescent home in Parkstone, walking through fields to get there.

After their marriage, the couple's son was christened at St Peter's Church in 1914. He later attended a private school nearby.

Speaking at the unveiling of the Evening Hill memorial in 1967, Lady Baden-Powell said: "I had a happy life here and have had many happy memories of Poole.

"I used to ride here and many are the times I have been stuck in the mud around the other side of Brownsea Island while boating, little dreaming of what was in store for me."

She went on to describe it as "the happiest time of my life".

Four surviving members of the first camp attended the ceremony that day, including Arthur Primmer and Reginald Giles, who had been members of the Poole Boys' Brigade at the time.

After her marriage, Lady Baden-Powell became very important in the Scout and Guide movement, herself becoming World Chief Guide in 1930.

She was also made the first woman freeman of both Poole and Blandford.

When she received the Freedom of Poole in 1950 she took a trip around the harbour in Hyacinth, the boat that took Baden-Powell to Brownsea in 1907 for that historic camp.

She died in 1977 aged 88 - 36 years after her husband - and thanksgiving services were held at churches including Ringwood parish Church, St Peter's, Parkstone and Sherborne Abbey.