1st Shoreham by Sea (Kingston Buci) Scout Group

A Brief History

The 1st Shoreham Boy Scout Troop was in existence by 1911 when it took part in the local

celebrations for the Coronation of King George V.

One of the Scouts was 13-year-old Digby Crunden Cleaver who lived on Shoreham Beach.

His older sister Margaret was engaged to marry the pioneer pilot Oscar Morison. He based

himself at the newly established Shoreham Airport. It was only eight years since the Wright

brothers’ first flight and Digby, fascinated by aviation was often to be seen at the airport

where he was regarded as something of a mascot by the pilots. On 7 May 1911 Morison

took Digby up for a flight in his Bristol Boxkite, making him the “First Scout to Fly”.

After the outbreak of the Great War Digby left school and went to learn to fly at Brooklands in

Surrey. He joined the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) as a 2 nd Lieutenant and shortly before

Christmas 1915 was posted to 1 Squadron (the oldest squadron in the RFC/RAF) based

near Hazebrouck in northern France. On 29 December 1915 Digby was flying at 1200 feet

when he fell from the aircraft as the result of an accident. Pilots then did not have parachutes

and sadly Digby was killed, he was just 17 years old. Today he is buried in a grave

maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in the cemetery at Hazebrouck

He is also commemorated on the Shoreham War Memorial. In 2000 four 1 st Shoreham

Venture Scouts went on an expedition to visit Digby’s grave. They hiked across France from

Calais to Hazebrouck and then on to the Menin Gate War Memorial in Ieper, Belgium as part

of their Queen’s Scout Award.

Sadly, few, if any, of the 1 st Shoreham Scouts returned from the war and for some years the

Troop fell into abeyance; their small timber cabin near the river, roughly opposite Surry

Street, passed to a new group of Sea Scouts.

However, 1 st Shoreham was revived in the inter-war years and has thrived ever since. In the

early 1960s it merged with the Scout Group based in the old St Julian’s Church Hall opposite

Kingston Beach; the new group became the 1 st Shoreham by Sea (Kingston Buci) Scout

Group.

For many years the Group had had no permanent home, then a little over 50 years ago it

leased a piece of land from West Sussex County Council in the corner of a field by a small

copse of elm trees in Eastern Avenue. The Group proceeded to build its own headquarters,

largely with voluntary labour, but with the support and advice of Tony Cook, a local builder

who had been a 1 st Shoreham Cub at the beginning of the Second World War. That building

is our current headquarters.

The Scout scarf or neckerchief is the one piece of Scout uniform which has not changed

since 1908 when Robert Baden-Powell prescribed it in “Scouting for Boys”. It had practical

uses; to prevent sunburn on the neck and as an emergency bandage, but Baden-Powell

also wrote, “Every Troop has its own scarf colour, since the honour of your Troop is bound

up in the scarf, you must be very careful to keep it tidy and clean.”

Our dark green and gold scarf also carries a badge; a circular representation of the 13 th

century borough seal of New Shoreham showing a medieval ship.