Introduction

The main 3rd Gidea Park Scout hall is divided into two sections plus an additional adjoining building used for storage.  The main section of the hall is where the various groups meet; the beavers, cubs, scouts, brownies and guides all meet here.  The other section of the hall is where the ventures used to meet; they had a room to themselves.  This section of the hall is known as the Venture room.

The ventures have a history of decorating the hall themselves in suitably tasteless colours.  Before the renovation of 1999, the hall had not been decorated since around 1993.  The circumstances surrounding this previous decoration are still not fully known but it is believed to have been started one Sunday after church paradeby two of the members of the RVU. Allen Matthews (the GSL) had provided a tin of paint from the loft in the only colour he could find and told these two members to paint over the obscenities which another member had painted on the wall.  The Venture room needed to be made presentable for the christmas Bazaar the following weekend. This is the reason why the venture hall ended up in the fetching scheme of pink walls with black trim.

When a group of scouts joined the RVU early in 1995 they vowed that something should be done about the tacky decor which was by now already showing it's age.  However, a more ambitious project was currently under way, namely the building of the new store.  So any plans had to be put on ice.  There were many plans being thrown around the RVU at the time, one plan even made it as far as a neat drawing indicating what was to be done.  But for now they remained as plans.