The History of 1st Stoke-on-Trent & Newcastle, St. Andrew's Porthill Scout Group

 

This site shows the history of our Group from its beginnings to the present date. Various original documents from the Scout Association and our own archive and photographs from various sources are shown on these pages. If you know anyone in the photos or are an old Scout yourself, please get in touch with us by clicking here. We are really interested to hear from anyone connected with the Group in the past.

The Scout Troop was started in 1908 by a number of boys in Porthill starting their own patrol and following BP's 'Scouting for Boys'. The Leaders followed afterwards! So we are only a year younger than Scouting itself.

The first piece of information showing that the Troop existed in 1908 has been found in a copy of The Staffordshire Sentinel football edition dated Saturday 5th December 1908.

 

The second cutting is from the following Saturday, 12th December 1908, and gives a report of the match. The report reads -

'Porthill Scouts were entertained at May Bank. Play was exciting in the first 20 minutes and Hawkins scored for the visitors. Before half time he again found the net. In the second half both sides played well, but one of the home backs fouled and from the penalty Gibbs scored. Shortly afterwards May Bank were awarded a penalty but Tomkinson saved. Two minutes afterwards the home team scored, but before the finish Hawkins scored again thus accomplishing the 'hat trick'. The Scouts returned winners by four to one.'

The earliest record The Scout Association has about the Troop is the warrant of Mr. W Hockett of 3 Sparrow Terrace, Porthill. This was dated 14th December 1908, but the records don't state with which Troop!
A hand written notebook with the title 'Boy Scouts Organisation Register for The Potteries and District Boy Scouts Association' has been found in the Divisional archive which has lists of all the Troops in existence between 1908 and 1910, the Scout Masters, the Assistant Scout Masters and even lists of the boys in the Troop and in which patrols! It states that Mr. Hockett was 42 years old, having been born on 23rd January 1866. He wasn't the Scout Master for very long however, he resigned on 10th March 1909. In the list of Scouts it gives the details of two of the Scouts mentioned in the above newspaper article. At this very early stage there were 34 Scouts in the Troop!

Click here to see the book - be warned it is a large download!

 

An original Porthill Scout?

Errr, no actually that is a drawing by Baden-Powell himself, but that is how one of our original Scouts would have looked.

The next bit of documentary evidence we have is a page from the Local Association Papers for our District, Burslem, in 1915. The Scout Master's name was the Rev. Nash and the Assistant Scout Master was Mr. P Bourne. The Rev. Nash coincidently arrived at St. Andrews Church in April 1908 and Mr. Bourne had been Assistant Scout Master since 9th December 1908 when he was 23 years old! At the time, there were twenty members of the Troop.
It is interesting to note that in many instances, the Scout Master tended to be the Church's vicar or Curate until the 1950's.

You can see the Local Association form here.

Please note, all the documents are © The Scout Association unless otherwise stated and all photographs are © The Wood Family unless otherwise stated.