BUCKMORE PARK WAS KNOWN THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. Now it is shut, after wrangles over ownership, leases and outstanding rent. 

I have happy memories of it — a party from my junior school was taken there weekly in a battered old bus for swimming lessons and I still have my certificate for completing a width at the Buckmore Pool.

I found it a rather basic place, but I was never a Scout and after an abortive attempt to join the 24th Medway Cubs (they still haven’t replied), decided there wasn’t enough luxury in Baden-Powell’s troops for my liking. Publisher Malcolm Wright, who lives in Chatham, also has happy recollections and has kindly provided me with a history of the Scout activity centre:

Buckmore Park opened in May, 1953, with all the pomp and ceremony that one would expect with Lord Cornwallis officiating. Bands played, a church service was held at St Albans Church in nearby Blue Bell Hill and, of course, there were the obligatory PT displays and campfire singing.

The aims of the Scouting movement are very much aligned with current government policy in that it was: “To develop good citizenship among boys by forming their character: Training them in habits of observation, obedience and self-reliance, inculcating loyalty and thoughtfulness for others, teaching them services useful to the public, and handicrafts useful to themselves — promoting their physical, mental and spiritual development.”

This was long before the days of the early 1960s and the construction of the Medway Towns Bypass which became the dual-carriageway known later as the M2 motorway. Subsequent widening of the M2 and major alterations to slip roads to Walderslade from it lead to visitors to Buckmore having to leave the A229 and then negotiate traffic lights and roundabouts to find the revised entrance.

Returning to the original entrance a narrowish drive lead to the flagpole and the old headquarters building which had a warden’s office, first aid room and providore (campsite shop). Over time an indoor swimming pool was added as well as a rifle range, go-kart circuit, five-a-side football, roller skating rink, abseiling and climbing walls, tennis court and an assault course. By this time (early 1970s) the site had grown to over 210 acres out of the 3,000 acres of local woodland.

Back in early 1952 the Medway West district Scouts were able to secure a lease of more than 60 acres of Buckmore Woods at the summit of the dip slope of the North Downs chalk escarpment. The original entrance was to be found among houses in Maidstone Road at Bridgewood.

Accommodation was spartan by today’s standards (compare the photographs with those on their website: just put Buckmore Park into your search engine) and was endured by all, mostly in good heart. This can be seen from the happy smiling faces from the lads from Fort Luton School in Chatham where I taught in the early 1970s and had a most active swimming club. 

Camp regulations were strictly enforced especially noise and dropping of litter. I recall as well that shorts were also compulsory as shown at the foot of each page of the booking brochure in bold red print — and watch out anyone trying to wear jeans in the campsite areas! 

The photograph  on the right shows the inside of Unit F6 which comprised one room with 12 bunks and one with three along with a kitchen complete with Calor gas cooker and a deep white butler sink. This was available for hire at the princely sum of 15p per person per night (quite posh when compared with the 10p that campers had to pay for their tents) but was doubled if you took in your own food supplies!

The karting track, which is now internationally known from its visits by royalty, Formula 1 drivers in their training such as Johnny Herbert and Jensen Button, cost campers and visitors 20p for five laps and Scouts could bring their own karts (as indeed I did being co-owner in 1974 of a splendid kart) if they so wished.

The kart track was one of the few places where the shorts-only rule was relaxed a little. Campers and visitors were allowed to change into overalls while going around the track — on condition that they changed back again to leave the track!

At the swimming pool the uniform was even more relaxed for “special sessions” when men and boys only (with permission — but who gave that permission?) who preferred to swim without the restriction of a costume were allowed a skinnydip. 

Buckmore Park was a popular venue for schools, swimming clubs and lifesaving groups being one of the few indoor pools available in Medway. Much training was done there by members of Gillingham Swimming Club as a winter alternative to the open-air Strand pool. There was even a springboard and three-level diving platform but the water was not that deep as to make high diving a very attractive proposition! 

Training in those days before parents took their children everywhere by four-wheel-drive monsters meant a trip on the bus, in my case a journey from Woodlands in Gillingham on the No 1 service from Maidstone & District calling in at Nelson Road depot, Military Road, Chatham, and eventually the old Bristol K6A double-decker climbing its way to the summit of Bridgewood and my departure before it “sped” its way down the old Bluebell Hill, Lower Bell and on to Maidstone passing Cobtree Zoo on its way. 

Sometimes, on busy days, a relief bus was dispatched. This was a model with the lowbridge DL body that had a sunken gangway and it was a job to clamber over other passengers to make your exit at Buckmore gates. 

The trip home was a little easier as I always got off at Pearson’s Fish Shop at Livingstone Circus and eagerly queued for my 5d worth of chips, 1d pickled onion and some free crackling — well, I had just completed over 100 lengths in training and home was still a mile away through the alleys past the Gills ground and down by the railway sidings.

Yes, we locals and visiting Scouts owe a debt of gratitude to Buckmore Park, its staff and wardens especially Cecil Whitehead who reigned there for so long and not least to the 1,260 Scouts in the 25 groups of the Medway West district who had the foresight to see its advantages back in the early 1950s. I wonder how many thousands phoned Bluebell Hill 495 in the days of non-automated dialling? How many phoned Medway 61295-8?

And to what in the future? It was indeed unfortunate circumstances that the site closed and the new facilities fell into disuse. 

Whoever is to blame perhaps the ghosts of William Makenade and the Archbishop of Canterbury — who authorised the Bridgewardens in 1403-4 to buy lands of Nashenden Manor, including 120 acres at Buckmore and Stylewode — will finally rest in peace.

A £1 voucher to spend in city's High Street emporium

A GLANCE AT THE CELEBRATORY PROGRAMME would have shown other local sponsors such as Bourne & Hilliers’ Channel Island Milk, George Summers offering scoutmasters their secondhand portable typewriters for £10 10s from their High Street emporium, a Leonards of Rochester competition with a £1 voucher prize to spend in their High Street department store. To gain their winnings, entrants had to list as many items as possible that Scouts might find useful from their store.

Finally W Paine & Co of Chatham and Strood offered camping equipment ranging from a blanket pin to a whole marquee. I think I remember Paine’s — in Chatham near the Central Hall and by the High Street end of Station Road in Strood — as the place where I bought my Dinky Toys all those years ago.

Among the list of donors to the local Scouts Association shown in the programme were such long-lost names as: British Road Services, The Brook Garage in Chatham, Cement Marketing Co, Featherstones of Rochester, Style & Winch and Wingets of Strood.

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