The Estate - Bevendean History Project
Scouts and Cub Hut at Lower Bevendean
Plan showing the site for the Scout Hut in Bevendean coloured pink.
Ref: DB/D/84/25/17614
Plan showing the position of the Scout Hut on the land to be used by the 54th Scout Group at Bevendean.
Ref: DB/D/139/60/815
Plan showing a proposed footpath to Scout Hut.
Ref: DB/D/84/28/21020
Plan showing the proposed Scout Headquarters for the 54th Brighton Scout Group at Lower Bevendean, Brighton.
The plan was approved on 4 June 1960.
Ref: DB/D/139/60/815.
Second plan showing the proposed Scout Headquarters for the 54th Brighton Scout Group at Lower Bevendean, Brighton.
The plan was approved on 4 June 1960.
Ref: DB/D/139/60/815/1.
Scout and Cub Group at Bevendean
Robert Browns memories of the Bevendean Scouts and Cubs recorded in December 2022.
Robert Brown joined the Cubs in 1963.
Originally the Cubs and Scouts met in the Barn Church or at Bevendean School. Later they leased a site behind 115 Heath Hill Avenue, where a headquarters building was completed on the 8th April 1963. (Information from one of the plans for the scout hut at Bevendean, held at the Keep).
The new headquarters building was opened by the Mayor of Brighton, Stanley Deason, who was the mayor in 1963.
The first scout master was the Reverend Kenneth Chapman, the vicar at the barn church on Farm Green.
A little further up the hill from the scout hut was a building used by the Bevendean Horticultural Society. This building was originally used by workmen building the houses on the Bevendean Estate. It is thought that they are originally used as a store for tools and materials and possibly as a messroom.
This building appears in photographs taken in 1947, when the houses in Heath Hill Ave were being built.
When the building was used by the Horticultural Society it was fitted with running water and toilet and used as a store for seeds, compost and other requirements for gardeners to use in their gardens on the estate.
This building was demolished somewhere about the year 2000.
The tables and chairs from the Horticultural Society building we’re moved to the scout hut when the Horticultural Cultural Society closed.
Robert left the Cubs and joined the St John’s Ambulance, later he went back to the scout group as a Cub/Scout leader about 1976.
Robert was an assistant leader in 1979/1980.
Later Robert was the chairman of the 54th Bevendean Cub Scout Group from 1991.
The group closed in about 2015 and the Scout Hut was demolished in 2021 as it required considerable renovation, before it could be used by another group, and this was not felt to be cost effective.
The Scout Hut behind a scaffolding tower set up for the scouts to abseil down in the summer of 1989.
Ref: 1989-0054_Scouts Hut at Lower Bevendean.
Construction of the Scout and Cub Hut at Lower Bevendean
