Some memories of the 4^th Derby Scout Troop, extracted from the memoirs of Harold Winfield, now aged 93, who joined the Troop in 1926

There had been a time when the church, which we attended, had started a Church Lads Brigade.  I joined but I could see little point in doing drill movements and I soon lost interest.  There was a bugle band for the older boys but I was too young to have a chance of learning to blow a bugle or even to bang a drum.  Because I had fallen out of the brigade my father was against me joining the scouts as some of my friends had done.  However I persisted and I joined an old-established troop, which was run by a remarkable man, Captain C.J. Bennett.

Captain Bennett had been an army man and he had served in the Boer War.  He was a bachelor and he was caring for his invalid 90 year old mother at this time.  We used his house and an extensive garden as our headquarters, with the weekly use of a school hall as required.  Scouting, for Captain Bennett was not a matter of giving one evening a week.  It was for seven days a week and his example as an upright Christian man pervaded all the activities.  I cannot over-estimate the power for good he exercised over many boys and for many years.  He was still an active group scoutmaster at the time of his death at 84 and he had taken boys to camp right into his eighties.

An extensive new housing scheme called for the demolition of Captain Bennett’s house and for his large garden to become a housing estate.  Also arising at this time was the desire to have a real scout headquarters.  The assistant Scouter was Reginald Treadgold, a house agent and civil engineer.  He drew up some plans and in the meantime we were able to buy a small triangular field at the top of the cinder path behind Normanton St. Giles church for £75.    This was much less than its real value but it was part of the Austin estate.  Mr Austin lived in the large house nearby.  He owned the provision store in the Market Place and he was a churchwarden in St. Giles’s Church.  Captain Bennett was the other churchwarden.  After Mr Austin’s death, his widow allowed us to have the field at this very nominal sum.  I was interested in surveying and I had assisted Mr Treadgold on one or two of his land agent jobs, so I assisted again in making a proper plan of the field and working out where the buildings would be erected and a good route for the land drains which were thought to be necessary.  The intention was to do as much of the work as possible ourselves.  To gain some initial experience we set about a brick building, which was intended originally, I think, as a Rover Den.  Meanwhile it was to be a store for tools and materials used in the main building.

My particular friend at this time was Fred Hoult.  He was a trainee draughtsman at the Internal Combustion works in Sinfin Lane.  He and I became the mainstays of the amateur labour recruited from the troop but some of the parents became interested in the project and lent their labour also.  My father became involved and though he was without building experience – as indeed we all were – he stayed the course better than most and he put in many hours.  His efforts were rewarded later by the presentation of the gold Scout Thanks Badge.  This badge was a scout fleur-de-lys superimposed on a swastika.  This was before the advent of the Nazis and their more sinister use of the swastika emblem.  I have never learned whether the badge has been re-designed since the war, I imagine it must have been.

We all gained bricklaying experience and my woodworking abilities were put to use with the setting up of the roof rafters, fitting in the window frames and hanging the door.  While all this was going on the plans for the main building were being worked out and it was decided to have a steel framed building.  The steel work was made up by a firm in Burton on Trent for the incredibly small sum of (I think) £120.00.  Before delivery we had dug out foundation holes for the main stanchions and had set in the fixing bolts with provision for more exact positioning later.  With hindsight the level set for these foundations was too low.  It was only later that it was realised that the use of this level would entail so much digging out of heavy clay soil to establish the floor level.  I am afraid that this heavy digging discouraged some of our labour force and we lost a number of our workers and parents.  It is on a project of this king that Baden-Powell’s quality of “stickability” is either discovered or lost according to temperament.

During all this time of activity concerning the headquarters the normal work of an active scout group continued.  There were camps, treks and District competitions and of course money for materials had to be raised.  Captain Bennett had some experience of stage productions.  He had been a welfare officer at Leys Malleable Castings Company and he continued to produce some of the shows put on by the works entertainment group.  He had a gift for painting stage scenery.  He could also put together words and music for the various shows and pantomimes we presented.  He had one failing in this however.  He would still be cobbling together words and tunes of new songs up to a couple of days before the first performance.  He seemed to think that the boys could perform his material with little or no time for rehearsal.  The boys often had quite heavy homework loads from school as well as their scouting.  Incredibly the short rehearsal time seemed to work.  There was an entertainment committee chaired by a parent, Frank Stapleford.  They undertook to raise not less than £100 a year towards the cost of H.Q. materials.  Some years they doubled this amount.

I had joined the troop in 1926 and I had applied myself to the various tests and badges.  The term “Badge Hog” was applied by lazier members to those of us who wanted to learn all we could.  I progressed to ‘second class’ quite quickly and to ‘first class’ by the end of 1927.  A suitable group of subject badges was sewn on to my shirt and I also had green all round cords and a King Scout badge for several public service badges.  I had been a Patrol Second for some time but with the first class I could become more exalted still and I became patrol leader of the Peewits, sometimes known to envious members of the Rams, Owls, Swifts and Curlews as “half-wits”.  Apart from badge hogging the troop always had camps at Easter and Whitsuntide and a trek in the Peak District in the summer.  We had a horse and cart to take the heavy gear from one campsite to the next.  The younger boys would take a cross country route, sustained by a sandwich lunch.  Two of the older chaps would take the horse and cart road to the new site.  They would try to have the tents erected and have a hot meal cooking by the time the walkers arrived.  Erecting the heavy Stormhaven tents in bad weather was no joke and some of the moorland campsites were very deficient in dead wood, or wood of any kind, for the cooking fire.  Of course Primus stoves did not figure in our equipment.  I went on trek first in 1926.

In 1927 we made a visit to France, spending part of the time just outside Paris and getting flooded out on our first night.  At this site we were vastly entertained by yarns from Major Macfarlane, a Canadian, who had been on secret service duties in the Great War.  His first-hand stories of some of his adventure were utterly absorbing.  He was married to a French lady and he owned the site which we were using.  After the French trip we also had a camp in Calke Park.  Calke Abbey has now been taken over by the National Trust.  The former owner Sir Vancey Harpur-Crewe was an eccentric.  Even when his married daughter, Mrs. Mosley, and her husband came down to visit they had to leave the car at the lodge gates and her father would send down the horse and trap to bring them up to the Abbey.  Sir Vauncey had died in about 1924 and Mrs Mosley, who knew Captain Bennett’s family, allowed us to camp, something which would never have been considered in her father’s time.

The park was full of deer and quite a lot of unusual birds as it had been a sanctuary for so long.  The head keeper had to cull one of the stags and we had some venison liver to cook.  I also, while acting as orderly, managed to reduce a Dixie full of prunes to lumps of glowing charcoal.  A watch would have helped us to keep better check on the boiling times but none of us owned one.  This was not the best way to become popular.  I think it may have been in 1928 that I led the troop team in the contest for the Drury-Lowe flag, which we won.

By now more and more time had to be given to building the new headquarters.  Sadly, also, at about this time there was some dissension between the two scout leaders.  This split affected the labour pool which we could call upon for the building work and there was a period in which the work was continued by only a very small group of us.  Some of the older members who fell away at this stage and never assisted in the building work at all found, when the hall was opened, that they had some leisure time after all and that the hall would nicely house a badminton court.  Those of us who had built the hall now turned our attention to building patrol rooms, a kitchen and a Scouter’s room.  Captain Bennett had by now lost his house and garden to the building contractors and after a time he actually lived in his quarters at the H.Q.  This took place after the war.  The H.Q. had been used by the Home Guard during the war and the thumping of rifles on the wood block floor, all of which had been laid by my father, did it very little good.  It is fair to say that some compensation was paid and the floor was renewed by Granwood blocks, which were more capable of coping with rough treatment.  I should say that the troop still occupies the buildings which we put up and it has been a great pleasure to return to Derby in some recent years to join in the birthday celebrations of what must be the oldest troop in the country.  Started in 1908 and still flourishing.

To go back several years in my account of building the H.Q., I recall some of the hazards we encountered.  One Christmas holiday was given over to erecting the roof trusses.  A very tall scaffold pole was equipped with pulley blocks at the top and it was guy-roped in four directions.  The second pulley was used to haul up a bosun’s chair so that lashings to the trusses could be checked.  I had been hauled up about halfway and I had just withdrawn my hands from the lashings when the large cast iron pulley from the main chain block dropped down before my face.  The retaining pin had sheared and the pulley had eased its way off the shaft.  Had it fallen a few seconds before, my head and hands would have been targeted and I might not even have survived to write this account so many years afterwards.  The trusses had to be linked by angle iron struts and the stanchions were levered into correct level and alignment against a tautly drawn piano wire.  The foundation bolts could then be tightened and the holes were then concreted in.  We became used to the gymnastic work of bolting in the struts and glazing purlins.  I think Fred Hoult sometimes chanced unnecessary risks at this stage but he was lucky and we avoided accidents.

There was a foundation brick laying day when Aldermen Salisbury and Bemrose joined one of our building squads – (we had two – led by Fred Hoult and myself).  Two courses on the end wall were laid, though some straightening work was needed when the Aldermen had gone and before the cement hardened.  From then on brick-laying on the outer walls went ahead.  Spare-time work by amateur labour necessarily made for slow progress and there were many wiseacres on the cinder path with gloomy forecasts.  “They’ll never finish it” was the most usual cry.  Progress was not helped by the amount of pilfering from the site.  The local DIY types on the new housing estate made off with a lot of tools and materials as the field fence had already been wrecked by vandals.  Security was a little better when we had the fence renewed but of course we could not run to a night watchman.  Even after the glass and asbestos panels were put on the roof, some of the local yobs thought it funny to heave brick ends and see how many panels they could break.  Of course we were all amateurs but some of us were more amateur than others.  I was in general charge during several seasons.  Because I had some craft skills, I had a ‘straight eye’ and could usually see at a glance when a pillar was not upright.  When I had to point this out to someone senior in years, perhaps a parent, I did not always succeed in being tactful, though I tried to be.  I know that I caused some offence to two of our helpers, but of course the tilted pillar had to come down and be rebuilt properly and it seemed that I was often the chap to do it.  My father had become a useful bricklayer but when we had to consider the floor it seemed sensible to put the wood block laying into the hands of one person.  We sought some advice from an experienced friend and father undertook the laying of all the blocks.  Quite a few burned finger-ends ensued, as the blocks had to be dipped in boiling bitumen mastic.  I made up the side lockers and hung the doors.  There was an opening ceremony in 1936.  We had started operations in 1930.  There was still more work to do on the ancillary rooms and we transferred our labour to this task for the next two years.  Though we claimed to have built the H.Q. ourselves, we were able to enlist the skilled help of Fred Hopkins, who looked after the plumbing, and a Rover Scout from another troop handled the electric wiring for us. 

Some of the entertainments which the scout group put on grew out of the shows which we did for the local hospitals at Christmas time but they also served to generate funds for our building efforts.  One theme which did well for us was based upon the Emperor Nero and his efforts to dispose of his enemies, particularly his mother-in-law Agrippina.  A special bed was made from which the victims could be dropped to the caverns below.  Of course there were topical songs and the inevitable “beauty” chorus.  There was also a pageant of St George with a fire-breathing dragon.  Another display was done with Indian clubs on a darkened stage with the clubs drilled out to take torch batteries with mini bulbs on the ends of the clubs.  We also had a circus knife-throwing act, which was so convincing that the parents of the ‘victim’ had to be let into the secret of the ‘throwing’ as they were worried about safety.

Later, when I had been doing some singing engagements, some of them to oblige other artistes, I persuaded these friends to come and sing for me in return and again the profits from such ventures were spent on building materials.  I remember getting a harpist friend to perform but we had to incur the cost of a van to transport the harp.  The musical part of these concerts often ended with a one-act play.  I remember Captain Bennett put on a convincing ‘cockney’ performance as a scruffy burglar in “The Burglar and the Girl”.

The great event in Scouting in 1929 was the World Jamboree in Arrowe Park, Birkenhead.  It had been agreed that the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire contingents would stage episodes from the life of Robin Hood.  The particular adventure was to be when Robin tricked the Bishop of Hereford.  Well beforehand a group of us had been formed to act as the Bishop’s bodyguard.  We were measured for our splendid costumes.  We then went to the local Territorial Hall where the officer in charge had agreed to give us some riding tuition.  I think we were there on about six occasions.  In Birkenhead arrangements had been made to borrow horses from a local riding school.  The school let us down – there were no horses after all.  Two of the Scouters toured the area and obtained motley collection of mounts.  Some had been pulling baker’s carts and had never been saddled before.  Apart from the motley mounts the ‘tack’ was also very variable in age, quality and fit.  We had a rehearsal with these mounts and it was clear that these horses did not like their riders very much.  I got a nasty gash on the inside of my thigh when the mount tried to buck me off.  Norman Berry had helped me to saddle up but he forgot to draw up the girth buckle under the saddle flap.  Each time the horse went up and down the buckle was gouging my leg.  We were still in shorts for this rehearsal.  In performance when we had the splendid costumes, the mounts were unused to such sights and they were more restive than ever.

We had a flock of sheep and a real shepherd with his dogs (Mr. Priestley from Hathersage).  The story was that the Bishop riding through the forest demanded tithes of the shepherds.  The ‘shepherds’ flung off their smocks to reveal the Lincoln Green beneath.  The guards dismounted and fought hand-to-hand but they were, of course, defeated.  They had to run back to their horses, mount and gallop off, pursued by a flight of arrows.  Time was lost because of the restive horses and the arrows, (fortunately not barbed), were falling among us instead of falling short as had been planned.  Anyway we galloped off as the Bishop was taken prisoner.  A deer was ‘shot’ and cooked over the campfire.  The Bishop had his toes rapped to make him dance.  He disgorged his money to the outlaws and he was then tied backwards on to his pony and sent on his way.  The money was then given to some poor peasants who then appeared just at the right moment.  We did the show twice and managed rather better at the second attempt.

We made some good friends among the foreign contingents and there was a lot of laughter at some of the national foibles.  Lord Baden-Powell came to look at the big model of the incredibly sized ram at the entrance to the Derbyshire camp.

Some of my boyhood adventures cropped up at scout camps.  At Easter we went to Sandybrook Hall – the home of Mr & Mrs Peveril Turnbull.  Mr Turnbull had been a district scout commissioner but had had lately died when I went to Sandybrook first.  His widow was then 78 and she was getting her chauffeur to teach her to drive.  She lived to a great age and she was always kind to us.  Another kind lady at this time was Mrs Okeover of Okeover Hall in Mapleton Village in the Dove Valley. On Easter Monday the Troop was invited to tea, an enormous meal served by the butler, cooks and housemaids.  One year I counted the varieties of cake and made it 23.  Sadly I think I only managed 22 of them.  After the meal a football was produced and we played Ashbourne Football between two small bridges over the brook.  Ashbourne Football is still played on Shrove Tuesdays when all the shopkeepers board up their windows and the game, which has no rules or any limit on the number of players, is played through the town.  More time being spent in the river Henmore than anywhere else.  Our Okeover football was of the same order and there were quite a few sodden shirts and shorts.  How we managed to play after all those cakes is a miracle.

Another Easter adventure from Sandybrook was to traverse Dovedale by night.  We had a meal earlier than usual on the Good Friday evening and we were up again at 2 a.m.  After a dollop of porridge, we set off for Thorpe Village, walked quietly through the Hotel grounds, skirted Thorpe Cloud Hill and we were into the dale – and very cold.  As the sun came up it shone first on the left-hand cliff top like a bright wall but it was not until we reached Dove Holes caves that the valley opened up enough to let any sun in to warm us up.  We continued up Milldale, Wolfscote and Beresford Dales to Hartington and a road walk down to Hulme End in the Manifold Valley.  The light railway was still extant then.  We followed the track down to Wetton and Thor’s Cave and made a cut across country back to the Dove.  There was no bridge and we removed our shoes and waded across – the cold water up to our thighs.  More cross-country walking back to the Buxton Road by New Inns and then down the road to Sandybrook.  We were there by soon after 12 o’clock.  We had a meal and played football in the afternoon.  We looked up our route on the one-inch map and it seemed to be about thirty-two miles.  We must have been mad, but I remember the hike so well after all these years.  Perhaps that is why we do such things – to add to the store of memories for old men like me. 

Scouting frequently indulges in games of a semi war-like nature.  One kills off an opponent by grabbing the scarf tucked in his belt.  We had one such game when we were at Calke Park.  It was a very hot day and we were all wearing just our shorts and pumps.  I came up with Mr. Treadgold who was on the ‘enemy’ side and I tried to grab his scarf.  He thrust me away and I rolled into a bed of nettles with results that can be imagined.  It was bad enough at the time but trying to sleep after lights out was even worse.  Stan Coleman was with us and, as a trainee chemist, he had some salves with him.  I was grateful for anything soothing.

Occasionally we ran a weekend game based on the idea that the chaps who could be free on Friday night were rustlers.  They had to pitch their small tents in a map-defined area about five miles square.  The tents were not to be more than 50 yards from a mapped road.  Then the rest of the troop who could only get away on the Saturday became the sheriff’s posse.  If the groups made contact we would then camp together and go to the village church on the Sunday Morning.  I was in the Friday group for one of these games.  The posse had even collected Captain Bennett’s dog hoping to track us down.  The dog was quite useless, but anyway the posse caught up with us in the open and we were then expected to lead them back to our camp.  We led them into a field full of stooks of corn and when we reached the top of the field there were some grumbles that this was more than 50 yards from the lane.  We had whispered to each other that we would lead our ‘captors’ past our tents.  With the farmer’s permission we had undone three of the corn stooks, put up our tents underneath and replaced the corn.  We had led our ‘captors’ past these stooks without any of them suspecting where the camp might be.

Our Whitsuntide camps were at Mackworth, where we had excellent relations with the farmer for many years.  The Markeaton Brook ran through the fields and on Whit Monday morning the sheep washing took place.  Planks were laid up to the brick bridge to deepen the water. Hurdle frames on the top enclosed the sheep.  The farm men were in the water in old clothes up to chest deep.  As each animal was pushed in it was seized by the legs and swilled around by the men before being released to the second pen.  It was tiring work and after a while some beer or hot drinks were sent down the lane to refresh the workers.  One odd thing I noticed.  The men would not drink while they were still in the water.  They always climbed out.  I asked one of them one day why this was the standard practice.  He looked at me in rather a pitying fashion as if I was silly to ask such a question.  He explained that science had discovered that liquids always found their own level and that if they had drunk the beer while still in the water it would not have gone down into their stomachs at all but would stop at chest level.  It was not just one man who believed this.  They all did.  Isn’t science wonderful!

As if the exertions of sheep washing had not been enough, there was a longstanding tradition that the scouts would play a football match on the field behind the Munday Arms on bank holiday Monday evening.  In earlier years this had been a rather a scrappy affair – the farm workers turning out in their old boots and clothing and sometimes well lined with beer.  In these encounters the nimble boys had run rings round the locals and piled up big scores.  One could imagine that the Munday Arms taproom had seen a village meeting about this and more active and younger players had been recruited, some of them from more distant villages.  Of course too there was now a valuable trophy to play for.  In a previous year, while exploring the brook course, Mr. Treadgold had found a copper bowl, oval in shape, which may indeed have had a history.  Quite a lot of work was done to knock out the dents and mount the cup on a suitable wooden base.  Some engraving and plating was done also and the name of the valuable trophy was the KYBO Cup.  After the plating it looked quite good, but why KYBO, some of the innocents wanted to know.  Well, it is the motto of one of the patrols, was the usual answer.  Persistent enquirers at last discovered that KYBO is an acronym for the very healthy motto – “Keep your bowels open”.  Some of the more genteel mothers were slightly shocked at this revelation but they should have been grateful for this stirring motto for good health.  Bowels were not normally mentioned by polite people in the 1920s.

One of our regular campsites was the Doctor’s field in Castleton.  This was near the centre of this small town and the residents came down to the ends of their gardens to look over the stone wall and listen to our campfire songs.  One year we had been in the field for two days before we actually saw the Doctor.  Quite casually, as he was leaving, he said, “by the way, what water are you using?”  We said “from the usual spring where it spills into the brook”.  He said that perhaps we should not use this source, as there had been a few cases of paratyphoid in the village within some recent months.  Rather too casual for our peace of mind.  It was at Castleton that one group of five boys were fast asleep in one tent when all the other tent inhabitants were up.  Someone suggested that, with care, the ropes and brailing loops could be lifted off and the tent removed.  This stealthy operation actually succeeded and the amazed boys awoke some minutes after and they could not imagine what he become of the tent.

One year we had lent one of our Stormhaven tents to another troop and we then found ourselves short for our own trek camp round the Peak.  We were in a small field at Hayfield, not far from Glossop.  Our horse had not been tied up and we had heard him stamping round.  Whether he tripped over a guy rope we do not know, but the strain was enough to tear off the rotten top cone of the tent, which then slipped down the pole and smothered us in wet canvas.  We took shelter in a barn.  It was clear that the bell tent could not be mended or used again but someone thought that a few of the older chaps could sleep on a groundsheet up to the wheels of the cart and that the A shaped cover of the cart could be pegged further out on poles and make us a shelter open at the sides.  This was quite successful until we got to Lea Green.  There was heavy rain in the night and we noticed as we awoke that the canvas had sagged downwards and was holding quite a lot of water.  John Read, a Rover scout with a rather squeaky voice had been first up and was standing at the edge of the ground sheet in his pyjamas.  Fred Hopkins, next to me, became conscious of the suspended water just then and gave it a strong push from below.  John Read got the full deluge and he danced around, vowing in his squeaky voice that Fred had done this on purpose.  To be fair, I don’t think Fred had noticed the standing figure at all but we heard the squeaky grumbles for a long time afterwards.  After the trek ended we took back the remains of the bell tent to Mr. Banks, the hirer, and told him a few things about the quality of his hiring goods. 

We were none of us used to horses and sometimes a horse who had been grass-feeding all night decided that he did not want to be caught and harnessed and became very skittish.  A large squad was required to catch him and this delayed our starts.  One year we could not get a horse at all but Mr. Allen, one of the parents, lent us a bull-nosed Morris car with a driver and ball hitch for the trek cart.  The Morris was in no way equal to pulling the load up some of the sharp Peak gradients.  We were in the lowest gear but we could not manage a hairpin bend on the steep hill near Langsett.  Everything we had began to run backwards towards a ditch.  Fortunately I had expected trouble and I had armed myself with two rocks, which I managed to wedge under the wheels.  We could see a local farmer in the field above, working with two splendid horses.  When we explained the trouble they brought down the horses and they quite easily drew us up and out of trouble.  It was beautiful to see the rippling equine muscles under the gleaming skin of the animals.  I have had a soft spot for Shires and Percherons ever since.

It was in 1935 that a few of us in the Rover Scouts heard of a cheap car.  It was an old Morris Oxford 1928 and the owner wanted £8 for it.  Two of my friends talked him down to £5.10 and five of us part-shared.  I learned to drive on it but we did not own it for long.  As one of our members was coming home on a dark night on a country road the lights failed, and he ran off the road into a telegraph pole.  This distorted the frame beyond repair.  So that was the end of the car we had called ‘Marina’.  The remnants went to a scrap dealer for, I think, £3.00.