Welcome to the Spelthorne District Scout Groups History Website.

Information about the Spelthorne District Scout Groups past and present and their history has been collected over the past few years by Scout Fellowship member Gerry Rance.

This website is an attempt to make this valuable information available to anyone in the district but also to jog a few memories !!

Please click on the links above to read about the history of the groups and (possibly) view some embarrassing photographs from yesteryear. To go straight to a gallery, please click the relevant group's gallery in the drop down menu: or click here for some group and district listings.

If, however, you click on a group and little or no information / photographs are there, maybe you can fill in a few gaps. If so, please contact Gerry or myself on the e-mail links below. We're looking for any history you may have - photos, dates of events, Scouting achievements, anything. We would be particularly interested in updating records of Queen's and King's Scout Award holders.

email : Keith Brewer or email : Gerry Rance


In the very beginning .........
Lord Robert Baden Powell held the first scout camp on Brownsea Island in 1907.
The very first Scout Troop to be formed in Staines was the 1st Staines & Egham Hythe Troop in 1908.
The Staines and District Scout Association was formed about two years later on the 25th October 1910, at The Club Room, on the corner of Thorpe Road (corner opposite where Sainsburys is now).
The original name was The Staines and Egham Hythe Corps.
Local newspaper records show that 54 Boy Scouts had been enrolled (invested ?) by the 19th November 1910 and that there was just the one troop - 1st Staines & Egham Hythe.

(Info about the very early days of Sunbury & Shepperton District will appear here).

Staines District and Sunbury & Shepperton District were merged to form Spelthorne District on 1st April 2005.


After a short interruption called The Great War, the 20's, 30's and 40's saw a lot of the other groups in the district started, some lasting longer than others. As a general rule, however, Staines District has gone from strength to strength over the past century.

The Spelthorne Scouts District has boundries approximately the same as those of the former Urban District of Staines in Middlesex. It includes the towns of Staines, Ashford, Ashford Common, Laleham, Stanwell, Sunbury, Shepperton, Shepperton Green and Halliford. Under the local government reorganisation of 1972, the Urban District was combined with it's neighbour Sunbury and Shepperton to form the Borough of Spelthorne in the County of Surrey. Spelthorne was originally one of the "Hundreds" or divisions of Anglo-Saxon England and was a much larger area than today's borough. The name Spelthorne is literally translated as "Speech Thorn Tree" and denotes the place of assembly where speeches were made and business conducted. The actual site is not known but it is believed to be in the Ashford Common area.

The original Staines District Badge was adopted in 1975 after an open competetion for its design which was won by Neal Smith of the 2nd Ashford Group. The background colour is intended to match the Surrey County badge and the red and blue of the sheild to commemorate the colours of the old Middlesex badge. The divisions of the shield represent parts of the District - the Tree of Spelthorne for Ashford, the London Stone and Swans of the old UDC of Staines and Laleham Abbey, the former seat of the Earls of Lucan.

It is worth a mention that, especially in the very early days, it was not uncommon for boys to belong to The Boys Brigade and a Scout Troop. The contribution of the Boys Brigade then and now should not be overlooked - Boys Brigade bands have led the annual Rememberance Day parades in Spelthorne for many years and continue to do so.

As above, ANY information, records or photographs you have, especially pre 60's, will help compile a more complete history of the Spelthorne District. Thank you.

Please click here for links to other scouting websites.

All images and information on this website is the property of Staines District Scouts and may not be used, copied or reproduced without permission.© Copyright Notice. Unless otherwise indicated, copyright of illustrations and information on this site resides with the Scout Association and Staines and District Scout Council. Views and opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect official policy of the Scout Association or of Staines and District Scout Council. Everything in this site is checked for it's content, however we cannot accept responsibility for the content of external sites that we have linked to.