Heritage

The story of Scouts in Bedfordshire is one of building on the miracles of dedicated effort by thousands of people for over 100 years.

How do you recover from two Great Wars that saw many hundreds of good leaders from the county die? How do you thank Leslie Baden Sell, a benefactor, who set up group headquarters all over the county and his biggest legacy the Leslie Sell Trust?

Then there was Alec Brown, a District Commissioner, who survived three years in a notorious Japanese POW camp and Frank Hamel, a County Commissioner, who was captured as a spy by the Italians while delivering clandestine operators to British stations along the North African coast.

There’s the hospital in Stockwood Park that in WW2 was home to a small group of disabled Scouts evacuated from Kent. Over in the leafy suburbs of Toddington was a centre at Milton Bryan where Felton Delmer organized a WW2 propaganda station helped by the Luton News. It is now a camp site amid the original buildings.

In these pages we unearth these extraordinary stories and the images that go with them. View them in wonder – the drama continues

Sub Heads
Ray Aldous Egyptian story
Rita Lewis 1957 Jamboree story
Jack Cornwell war hero
Alec Brown POW story
Frank Hamel WW2 spy story
Leslie Sell benefactor story
Bedfordshire Groups’ History
Gangshows
Jamborees
Baden-Powell Way – Biggleswade
WW1 stories
WW2 stories