Motto | Corpus Leandri spes mea |
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Location | Remenham, Berkshire, England |
Coordinates | 51°32′17″N0°53′57″W / 51.53806°N 0.89917°W |
Home water | Henley Reach, River Thames |
Founded | 1818 |
Affiliations | British Rowing boat code - LDR |
Website | www |
Notable members | |
See below |
Leander Club, founded in 1818, [1] is one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world, and the oldest non-academic club. It is based in Remenham in Berkshire, England and adjoins Henley-on-Thames. Only three other surviving clubs were founded prior to Leander: Brasenose College Boat Club and Jesus College Boat Club (the two competing in a Head race in 1815) and Westminster School Boat Club, founded in 1813.
Leander was founded on the Tideway in 1818 or 1819 by members of the old "Star" and "Arrow" Clubs and membership was at first limited to sixteen. [2] "The Star" and "the Arrow" clubs died out sometime in the 1820s and Leander itself was in full swing by 1825. By 1830 it was looked upon as a well-known and established boat club. [3]
In its early days, Leander was as much a social association as a competitive club and it was steered by a waterman. It was the first club to support young watermen and instituted a coat and badge for scullers.
In 1831, Leander defeated Oxford University in a race rowed from Hambleden Lock to Henley Bridge, but when it lost the match with Cambridge six years later, Lord Esher noted at a dinner that Leander was:
A London Club consisting of men who had never been at the University but ... were recognised throughout England, and perhaps everywhere in the world, as the finest rowers who had up to that time been seen.
However, Lord Esher also noted that they were "verging on being middle-aged men." [2] Until 1856, the number of members was limited to twenty-five men. After this date membership was increased to thirty-five and the limit finally abolished in 1862. [3] In 1858 Leander began to recruit members from both Oxford University and Cambridge University.
Its first home is assumed to have been Searle's yard, Stangate – on the south bank of the River Thames (on land currently occupied by St Thomas's Hospital). [4] In 1860 the membership moved the club to Putney where a small piece of land was rented on which a tent was erected for housing boats. This land was bought by London Rowing Club in 1864 and is the site of LRC's current clubhouse. Leander was able to lease a piece of land adjoining and in 1866 started to construct a boathouse. Thirty years later, in 1897, the club purchased land in Henley-on-Thames and built its current clubhouse. The club's centre of gravity moved rapidly to Henley, although the Putney boathouse was retained until 1961.
Leander entered a crew at Henley Royal Regatta for the first time in 1840, the year following the regatta's foundation. Their crew which won the Grand Challenge Cup included Thomas Lowther Jenkins in the 5 seat. Jenkins' winner's medal was discovered in a Belfast junk shop more than 130 years later by a member who donated it to the club, where it sits in one of the trophy cabinets.
For the first 179 years of its existence, Leander was a male-only club but has accepted women members since 1998. On 1 January 2013 Debbie Flood was elected as the club's first female captain, and was re-elected the following year.
Leander was one of five clubs which retained the right until 2012 to appoint representatives to the Council of British Rowing. The others were London Rowing Club, Thames Rowing Club, Oxford University Boat Club and Cambridge University Boat Club. [5]
Leander members contributed 23 of the 45 British rowers selected for the 2020 Summer Olympics. [6]
Notable members include:
In Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited , the character Cousin Jasper (who "had come within appreciable distance of getting his rowing blue") wears a Leander Club tie when he first calls upon the protagonist Charles Ryder to offer advice on being a student at Oxford. [7] :24,25 In the 1981 television adaptation, Cousin Jasper (played by Stephen Moore) is depicted wearing the Leander's "city" tie (dark blue with small pink hippopotamus motifs). [8] In the novel Growing Up by Angela Thirkell, the Rev. Tommy Needham "thought how well his college and Leander oars, never to be used again, would look upon the wall...." [9] The Leander Club figures heavily in Deborah Crombie's detective novel, No Mark Upon Her.
Year | Winning crew/s |
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2013 | Victor Ludorum, Open 2x, Open4x, Open 4-, Open 8+, Women 2x, Women 4-, Women 8+ [10] |
2014 | Victor Ludorum, Open 2x, Open 8+, Women 8+ [11] |
2015 | Victor Ludorum, Open 2x, Open 4-, Open 4x, Women 4x, Women 4- [12] |
2016 | Victor Ludorum, Open 2x, Open 4x, Open 8+, Women 4x, Women 8+ [13] |
2018 | Open 4x, Women 4x, Women 8+ [14] |
Key
+ composite
Henley Royal Regatta is a rowing event held annually on the River Thames by the town of Henley-on-Thames, England. It was established on 26 March 1839. It differs from the three other regattas rowed over approximately the same course, Henley Women's Regatta, Henley Masters Regatta, and Henley Town and Visitors' Regatta, each of which is an entirely separate event.
British Rowing, formerly the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA), is the national governing body for the sport of rowing. It is responsible for the training and selection of individual rowers and crews representing Great Britain and England, and for participation in and the development of rowing in England. Scottish Rowing and Welsh Rowing oversee governance in their respective countries, organise their own teams for the Home International Regatta and input to the GB team organisation.
The Head of the River Race (HORR) is an against-the-clock ('processional') rowing race held annually on the River Thames in London, England, between eights, other such races being the Schools' Head of the River Race, Women's Head of the River Race and Veterans' Head of the River Race. Its competitors are, with a few experienced junior exceptions, seniors of UK or overseas competitors and it runs with the ebb tide down the 4.25 mile (6.8 km) Championship Course from Mortlake to Putney which hosts the Oxford and Cambridge head-to-head races usually between one and two weeks later.
Vesta Rowing Club is a rowing club based on the Tideway of the River Thames in Putney, London, England. It was founded in 1870.
The Thames Rowing Club (TRC) is a rowing club based on the tidal Thames as it flows through the western suburbs of London. The TRC clubhouse stands on Putney Embankment. The club was founded in 1860.
London Rowing Club is the second oldest of the non-academic active rowing clubs on the Thames in London, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1856 by members of the long-disbanded Argonauts Club wishing to compete at Henley Royal Regatta.
The Cambridge University Boat Club (CUBC) is the rowing club of the University of Cambridge, England. The club was founded in 1828 and has been located at the Goldie Boathouse on the River Cam, Cambridge since 1882. Nowadays, training primarily takes place on the River Great Ouse at Ely.
Kingston Rowing Club (KRC) is a rowing club in England founded in 1858 and a member club of British Rowing.
Sons of the Thames is a rowing club in Hammersmith, London, England. It was formed in Putney in 1886 with the aim, still enshrined in its constitution, to further the sport of rowing.
Raymond Broadley Etherington-Smith was an English doctor and rower who competed for Great Britain in the 1908 Summer Olympics.
Guy Nickalls was a British rower who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics as a member of the British eight that won gold, won 22 events at Henley Royal Regatta and won the Wingfield Sculls three times.
The Thames is one of the main rowing rivers in Europe. Several annual competitions are held along its course, including the Henley Royal Regatta, The Boat Race and other long-distance events, called Head of the River races (Heads).
Putney Town Rowing Club (PTRC) is a rowing club on the Tideway, the tidal reach of the River Thames in England. Its official British Rowing registered colours are navy and white.
Maidenhead Rowing Club is a rowing club, on the River Thames in England at Maidenhead, Berkshire.
City of Cambridge Rowing Club (CCRC) is the oldest 'town' rowing and sculling club in Cambridge, UK, and with about 300 members, it has one of the largest active rowing memberships in the region. The club's colours are dark blue, with a band of claret sandwiched between two bands of 'old gold'.
Marlow Rowing Club is a rowing club on the River Thames in England, on the southern bank of the Thames at Bisham in Berkshire, opposite the town of Marlow, Buckinghamshire just beside Marlow Bridge and on the reach above Marlow Lock. Founded in 1871, it is one of the main rowing and sculling centres in England. Members of the club have represented Great Britain in the Olympic Games and World Championships.
Leeds Rowing Club is a British Rowing affiliated club in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire. It was founded in 2006. The club is based in two locations, its main boathouse is on the canal at Stourton by Thwaites Mill in the south of the city, while its Learn to Row and recreational rowing sessions happen at Roundhay Park, to the north of the City centre. The club row in dark blue, with a vertical yellow stripe between two white stripes down both sides. Blades are dark blue with a lighter blue tip.
Trinity College Boat Club (TCBC) is the rowing club of Trinity College, Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The club's members are students and staff from Trinity College and, occasionally, associate members from other colleges.
Reading University Boat Club is the rowing club for the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. It is based at a boat house in Christchurch Meadows on the River Thames in the Reading suburb of Caversham. The club has a focus on sculling. It has consistently been one of the more successful university rowing clubs in Britain, including topping the medal table at the BUCS regatta in 2011 and at the BUCS small boats head in 2014 and 2015, as well as wins at Henley Royal Regatta in 1986, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013, and is considered one of the top six university rowing clubs in the UK. A number of former members have competed at the Olympics, including double gold-medallists James Cracknell and Helen Glover. The club has organised the Reading University Head of the River race since 1935.
Abingdon Rowing Club is a rowing club on the River Thames based on Wilsham Road in Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.