History

There has been a Scout Group at St. Luke's for more than 50 years. Meeting in the old hall of the Church, a Cub Pack was opened in 1954, and a Scout Troop was started soon afterwards. One of the first ever members included the current curate of St. Luke's Church, Robin Williamson, who recalled at recent Cub meeting how he was involved in the choosing of out Group Scarf colours. "We were given the choice of the split colours as you have now, or a white scarf with a red border". (We're thankful you chose the one you did Robin!). The scarf colours are the St.Luke's School football team colours, which used to be in the black and white building you see as leave the church car park.

Four years later, fund raising on a massive scale took place on the old field above Holland Road, on the Sittingbourne Road, (now Vinter's Park housing estate), to raise money for our own HeadQuarters. Efforts were outstanding and a great deal of money was raised. Some the stalls included a tombola, crockery smashing (still a favourite these days), bash the rat, and varoius other stalls. The St. John's Ambulance crew was among the other local organisations who supported the event.
In 1961, our Headquarters was finally opened, and our growing Scout Troop and Cub Pack took up residence. The first person to take charge of the Group and hold the appointment of "Group Scout Master" (all leaders were called "Master" before 1967 - including the ladies) was the Rev H.V. Simmonds, who was followed by Ron Leyh, a much repected and admired member of the Group still to this day. Following Ron's death, Mr Tony Young took over as GSM.

In the early 1970's the Group had grown sufficiently enough to open a second Cub Pack and Scout Troop. On March 31st 1971, Mr Derek Long (known to most as "Rikki") was appointed as Group Scout Leader, taking over from Commander Brounger, whom we believe was the first person to hold the appointment of Group Scout Leader. 1971 also saw Peter Taylor appointed the Scout Leader of the newly formed Friday Troop. Rikki also carried on as the Scout Leader of the Monday troop, to be succeeded by Malcolm Dickerson, who had been in the Group since he was a cub, in the late 1970's. Rikki moved on to become Thursday Pack Akela.

The 80's saw much change at St. Luke's. Jim Martin, who also joined the Group as a Cub, took over the Wednesday Pack, and married his assistant cub leader Rebecca Johnson, who took over the Cub Pack a few years later, when Jim became District commisioner of the newly formed Maidstone East Scout district. In September 1986 St. Luke's welcomed their first Beaver Scouts on Tuesday evening. This was soon followed by a second Colony on a Monday evening.

During the early 90's, 6 members of the Monday Troop took part in the ITV televison programme "You Bet". The task they set themselves involved putting up a large Patrol tent BLINDFOLD in under 3 and half minutes. Naturally lots of practice paid off, and they manged to do it on the night, much to the everyone's amazement! Rikki held the post of GSL until 1998, when our current Group Scout Leader, Malcolm Dickerson, was appointed. He was the Monday Scout Troop leader for a number of years before his appointment, first as Rikki's assistant and then as his successor, and handed over the post to Matt Caney.