We are very lucky to have our own Scout and Guide hut right in the centre of our lovely village next to a large play park. And we are running a long term project to extend and refurbish this into our Big New Hut. This will better meet our current needs for young people in Aldbourne, and ensure Scouting and Guiding can carry on in the village for many years in the future.

The existing hut was built in the 1960s and is structurally very solid, but a little tired around the edges, and too small for our modern needs with so many children now in the various Scouting and Guiding groups.

The hut is built on land leased from the Parish Council (with a recently renewed lease until 2054), and is run and maintained by an independent committee called the Aldbourne Scouts and Guides Supporters Committee.

We are a Registered Charity (Number 1200440).

We have been fundraising for 12 years, and were granted full planning permission in 2021 to proceed and build the hut.

DECEMBER 2024 UPDATE

We have now completed the new extension! This is a self-build project with volunteers from within the local community, and we have had tremendous turn-outs of helpers over the last three years to help us get to this stage. After the Phase 1 stage of design and planning, and Phase 2 of the (dreaded) groundworks, we have now complete our Phase 3 – getting the new extension fully constructed and watertight. We were very proud to all drink a beer together standing on the highest point of our lovely new roof as our “Topping Out” ceremony in September 2023. Internal work progressed rapidly since then with the internal fit-out of plumbing and electrics, kitchen, shiny new WCs, and we have now finished all the decoration work. The new extension will be open for all the young people to use in January 2025 and we are now starting to think about Phase 4 – renovating the inside of the existing 60 year old hut and Phase 5 – the final external groundworks.

See a sneak preview of the inside of the new extension in this short video:

A little scrapbook of photos from the last three years of the build:

Plans

History

We first started talking about this project in 2012, and our fundraising began in earnest in 2013 with a huge Gang Show that the whole group took part in. Since then we’ve held beer festivals, ceilidhs, firework displays, race nights, and cooked more burgers at village events that you would ever dream of eating.

Palmer’s Field

For several years we discussed the idea of moving the Scouts and Guides over to Palmer’s Field on the other side of the village and building a new hut from scratch. But after very careful consideration of the pros and cons, we all finally agreed that this would not be the best fit for us, and creating a Big New Hut by extending and refurbishing what we already had would be the most realistic, the most achievable, and would better serve our long term needs.

We set ourselves a fundraising target of £100,000 and have now raised £99,000 to date. We are extremely grateful to all the kind and wonderfully generous people in the village who have made donations to us.

We have currently spent £75,000 building the new extension, which leaves us with a very healthy £24,000 to renovate the existing old hut.