Heritage Enquiries Service

The Enquiries Service is led by our Heritage Research and Engagement Coordinator. Typical enquiries include research into group or district histories, information about Scouts events and identifying objects.

We aim to make an initial response to your enquiry within five working days. If you’d like to contact us about an aspect of Scout heritage, please provide us with as much information as possible to aid our research.

There isn’t a charge for this service, however if you’re able to make a donation to support the ongoing care and development of the Heritage Collection, we do welcome your support. You can make a donation, and please select Heritage Support from the drop-down menu.

The Heritage Service has limited capacity. Therefore, if we believe the enquiry will take a large amount of staff time, we may invite you to visit Gilwell Park to conduct your own research visit.

Data Protection

Please note that we can only release information about individuals in line with GDPR regulations. This means that we can’t release information about individuals who are still living without their prior consent.

As we don’t necessarily know whether an individual is deceased, we have a blanket policy that we don’t release data for people under 100 years old.

As of 2023, this means that we cannot release information about:

• Volunteers after 1943
• Scouts after 1933
• Cubs after 1931

Where we have group records, such as registration documents, we can release these once we’ve removed all personal data.

Valuations

Please note that the Scout Heritage Service is unable to provide monetary valuations of historic material or memorabilia. This is in accordance with the Museums Association’s Code of Ethics.