Long serving Scout leader Daphne Strong, who was awarded Scouting’s highest honour after devoting 50 years of service to the movement, has died of cancer.

Mrs Strong, 79, lived at Easton Royal with her husband of 55 years, Alan, who, like her, was both born and brought up in Easton Royal.

She died on July 6 and Scouts from all over Wiltshire attended her funeral held at St John The Baptist Church in Pewsey last Thursday.

She and her husband between them had notched up a total of 100 years service to Scouting.

The two were born just five days apart and delivered by the same district nurse.

They lived just a mile and a half apart throughout their childhood and teens but did not meet until a blind date at the former Rex Cinema in Pewsey in 1951.

They married three years after that meeting and later their three daughters were to wear the same hand-made wedding dress as their mother had done.

As a girl Mrs Strong was a member of Burbage Guides and, after leaving school, she was apprenticed as a hairdresser.

Mrs Strong worked as a volunteer all her life, serving on Easton Royal parochial church council for 32 years and was for 20 years churchwarden at Holy Trinity Church.

She helped at the village school and hall and for years organised the harvest supper.

She was a member of the WI and the Mothers’ Union and was one of the first lay pastoral assistants in the Pewsey church team.

For many years she distributed the church Messenger magazine around her home village.

Both she and her husband were volunteers in Pewsey’s Craft and Tea Shop and she became its Wednesday manager. But most of all Mrs Strong will be remembered for her dedication to Scouting.

She joined as a leader in 1963 and became Akela to Pewsey Cubs, helping her husband build the Pewsey Scout group to more than 100 members.

She became assistant county commissioner for the Cubs and then served ten years as North East Wiltshire Scouts commissioner as well as acting as secretary to the Scout Fellowship for 15 years.

Once a year she worked the Trading Post shop on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, the birthplace of Scouting and an international campsite for Scouts and Guides.

Her long service with the Scouts was recognised when she was presented with the movement’s highest honour, the Silver Wolf.

Last year she helped organise an exhibition in St Peter’s Church in Marlborough to mark 100 years of Scouting in north Wiltshire.

She is survived by her husband, three daughters and five grandchildren.