Brathay Trust
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| Formation | 1946 |
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| Location | |
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Region served
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Cumbria, Lancashire, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire |
| Website | www |
Brathay Trust is a youth charity with its head office and residential centre based at Brathay in Cumbria, England. Founded in 1946 by Francis C. Scott, the charity is based at the Brathay Hall and estate near the town of Ambleside. The organisation's main focus is on training and developing general skills for youth, including Lake District-based outdoor education and experiential learning, but also organises people and organisation development courses for adults. In 2007, the trust began holding the Brathay Windermere Marathon, a now annual charity marathon.
In 1939, Francis Scott of the Provincial Insurance Company in Kendal, purchased Brathay Hall estate, an 18th-century country house. Scott wanted to protect the area from housing and business development and to devote the residence to a charitable cause. The events of World War II caused Scott to postpone his plans, until eventually Brathay Hall Trust was founded in 1946. Scott saw a need for a leadership training and an activity centre, so offered Brathay Hall as a base for the National Association of Boys' Clubs. He began running "Holidays with Purpose", a one-week course of outdoor education and cultural activities, including the production of newspapers and staging drama productions. The courses targeted boys from low socio-economic backgrounds who lived in cities in the north of Britain.
In 1947, the Brathay Exploration Group was founded as an offshoot of Brathay Trust by geographer Brian Ware. Boys taking part in Brathay Trust programmes who had shown promise were recommended for the course, along with schoolboys, which partnered with universities to conduct field studies. The group originated after a comment by geographer WV Lewis, who noted that many of the Lake District tarns had imperfect depth data collected on them. The group conducted glacier surveys in Norway and Iceland, and ornithology surveys on Foula in the Shetland Islands, and has continued to lead data collection expeditions well into the 21st Century.
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