The message
from John Rumm contains these words:

The Medway Handyman wrote:

As a relative newbie to this group, I was wondering, how did it all start?

Don't know, but I presume it predates the "correct" mechanism for
creating uk groups:

http://www.usenet.org.uk/guidelines.html#guidelines

since we don't have a charter.

Who got it off the ground in the first place?

Don't know... John S was about then, he might...

I understand it pre dates e- groups like Yahoo?

Usenet itself does - by a long margin (predates HTTP). This group looks
like it was created at the end of '94 if google's archive is to be believed:

http://groups.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y/about?hl=en

The first recorded posting is dated 5/12/94 but I suspect that google
doesn't have anything like a complete archive. IIRC the archive in those
days was deja but deja went to the wall and some time later google got
its hands on dejas archive but as published it is certainly not
complete. Some of my early contributions are missing.

I would have posted first to rec.walking but there is nothing there from
me prior to December 1996 while my first recorded post in this ng is 20
April 1996 and I don't think that was my first. My first payment to
Zetnet appears to have been in March 1996.

Incidentally Ed Sirett was a very early contributor. Perhaps his memory
for long past events is better than mine.

Posted in rec.walking 11/10/95

"Its taken since April to get this group up and working and it is the
first group to to be created on uk.* to the new rules. Can I thank
all those who took part, all those who voted, but especially Mark
Alexander who organised the voting."

Which dates the 'new rules' fairly closely.