Welcome to the Swamplanders
Thanks for dropping in on this website which focuses on a fairly brief period in the late 1950's and early 1960's and the activities of the young people who were members of a South London Scout Group.
Although the official title of the Group was the 8th Lambeth Scouts and it was located in Stockwell, the youngsters tended to prefer thinking of themselves as "The Swamplanders" and their local area as "The Swamp".
This zany approach permeated their lives - much influenced by "The Goons", a popular radio show at that time. Few managed to escape without their given name mysteriously being supplanted by a nickname.
Worse was to come... and a number of Scouts found themselves depicted as cartoon characters in the Group's newsletters and, eventually, a national magazine!
Interestingly, nobody seemed to mind. Even more interestingly, youths who might easily have sniffed loudly at the thought of joining the, then, "BOY Scouts" and wearing shorts and funny hats were drawn in and enjoyed the camaraderie of the 8th Lambeth Senior Scouts and Rover Scouts.
We've rescued a number of photographs, published cartoons and the seriously faded remains of the Scout Group's own newsletters and, with much use of computer graphics software, given them a new lease of life on this website.
We hope you think it was worth the effort.... and maybe feel inclined to leave a message on our Guestbook.
THE SWAMPLANDERS cartoon strip appeared in The Scout, a weekly magazine for young members of the UK Scout Association in late 1960.
See the "real life" Swamplanders in the photo album on this website.
Despite faded pages and much weird script text, we've rescued content from the 8th's newsletters.
The exploits of the Hamclap Seniors appeared in The Scouter magazine in 1960 and 1961.