Information taken from HARGRAVE - A LOCAL PERSPECTIVE.
May 2004

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The Hargrave Brigade is the 8th Mid - Suffolk Company but for the first five years it was known as the 1st Wickhambrook.  The first enrolments into the new Company took place on 15 March 1941 before a packed church congregation in Wickhambrook. The first Captain was Rev.Hewitt and Mr.Frank Morley was one of the five Lieutenants of the Company at the time. The combined groups, one at Hargrave and one at Wickhambrook, had a membership of thirty at inception and for an equal number of years the two groups existed with  considerable friendly rivalry between them.

The Company provides a wide range of activities for boys from six years of age to late teens, and is divided into three sections of age range - Anchor, Junior, and Company Sections.  Activities include outdoor sports, band instrument tuition and playing, PE, games, table tennis, snooker, crafts, and drill and badgework.

The present Captain is Mr.Peter Morley who is Frank Morley’s nephew, and Peter took the helm some fifty-eight years after he first joined the Company.  The Morley name is almost synonymous with the Company, and no story says more about the character building attributes of the organisation, than that associated with the building of their Drill Hall during 1949.

Following the early years, when meetings took place first in the Chapel, and later in the Village Hall, an ex-RAF Nissun Hut became available in Newmarket, but the Company lacked the wherewithal to get it to Hargrave. The building was full of sanitary fittings - like gold so soon after the war - and a local builder was persuaded that he could have the fittings for re-use, provided that he dismantled the building and transported it to Hargrave.  Members of the Company then set to, to wire brush and paint every individual component of the building, preparatory to its re-erection.  Mrs Laura Morley’s father made a piece of land available for the building, and after filling in a pond and levelling the ground, the task of concreting the foundations and ground-slab was undertaken.  Piles of aggregate and sand were delivered to the land which is the present site of ‘Peasholm’ house and a large concrete mixer was obtained.  With meticulous drill (or very nearly !) respective teams shovelled sand or aggregate or cement into the mixer, whilst an equally drilled team barrowed the product across and down the road to the building site.  Peter observed that ‘Hargrave only saw about ten cars in those days, and if they tried the same thing today that they would probably be run over !! ’.  The friendly builder was on hand at site with a team of placers and tampers, and at the end of a very eventful Easter weekend the base was in position.  Brickwork followed to a slightly more relaxed timetable and the Company then joined forces again to erect the newly painted frame and panels. 

Fifty years later, the building remains a tribute to their endeavours, and is in constant use by the present Company, which has a membership drawn from Hargrave, Barrow, Chevington, Chedburgh and Wickhambrook. 

An update for 2010 shows that the Boys Brigade has now closed and at the end of 2010 the site, along with the Methodist Church, has be sold for re-development where a new house will be built.