Geoff Brown on Sea Scouts
We were in Cross Street in the mid-70’s, early 70’s. The building we knew was going to disappear, so we looked at where we’re doing out boating based down at Whitegates off Arctic Road.
We looked at land round here to develop, put our own building up, and we were looking at a piece of land close to here but there was a dispute on what the land was worth and about three or four Solicitors down the line to get to the owner. And, then this land which was an old coal siding for Cowes to Newport Railway.
When British Rail transferred all the land on the Island, railway land to the Isle of Wight Council, the following Monday we stepped in and said, “Can we have this bit of land? It’s flat, very close to the water, it’s an old coal siding.”
And they’d already knocked down the Crossing-Keepers house so it was just completely flat, and we looked at the Council and said, “Now, can we have this?” “Yes, yes, yes, we get rid of some of the land.” “How much for?” Well, they’d already been looking at some Grand Aids, some from the Medina Borough Council and then some from the County Council.
So, they said, “Well, these Grants are all earmarked towards … you, you can have it for £2,000” which is what the other bit of land we were looking at was worth. And we put a bit of wire across the front and several years later, we had to raise a lot of money, and several years later whilst it was just a jungle, people were applying for planning permission.
The Council said, “Don’t you want this land?” “Yeah, we just haven’t got the money to put the building up.”
When we eventually put the building up we had a … it was 40ft wide which was the maximum we could fit in with the road alongside and we went back 106ft because that’s what we could afford. When Lord Mountbatten, who was then Governor of the Isle of Wight, but was also Commodore of Sea Scouts, when he opened the building for us it was unlined; it was just a bare shell.
It was completely unlined and over the years we obviously did a lot more work on it and the major bit was in 2002 we took 8 foot off the main hall and converted the toilets and put showers in and what have you. And then in 2012 we did a major refurbishment because we had a leaky asbestos roof.
So, we had to get rid of the asbestos which meant that once the roof was missing, obviously the water got in so eventually we had to completely re-do the hall. And, that was a major, major work.
Then Dame Ellen McArthur came back and reopened the hall, so to speak, after refurbishment and, of course, in the meantime we bought a pre-fab just after the late 70’s, we bought a pre-fab from the old Seaview Road Estate at the top of Cowes. We bought one for, ten quid it cost us.
We knocked it down, sold the innards for £30 scrap, knocked it down and put it back up exactly as it was. Every panel was numbered, and we put an up and over garage door in the end. We used a 3rd of it for newspaper storage, the rest to put boats in.
And we still have, in the main hall here, we have a boat workshop which was originally designed around the two boats we had in the mid 70s, a 12 foot boat and an 18 foot boat, which stayed in here for about a month before we sold them because they were wood and we’ve gone over to completely now to plastic boats now, less maintenance. But, yeah, over the years we’ve just developed things as we’ve gone along.
