History
Rowing at Oxford in the 1800s
Rowing as a common recreational pastime within the University appears to have become popular around the end of the 1700s, with the first official record of racing taking place in the summer of 1815 (just a few weeks prior to the Battle of Waterloo), between Brasenose and Jesus College. Documentation describes the event as a something of a crude, unrefined founding race, stretching the short upstream distance past Iffley Lock, and subsequently leading to the establishment of the modern bumps races. In particular, the 1815 race is said to have birthed 'Summer Eights', of which Brasenose are accredited with being the first 'Head of the River' crew, following their 1815 win against Jesus.
By 1826, the friendly race had expanded to include four colleges,
becoming an annual contest comprising recognisable 'bumping' rules.
Reminiscent of the founding race, each crew started at a defined position
along the bank directly upstream of Iffley Lock, and a pistol shot
signalled the commencement of racing. If a bump occurred, all crews
behind immediately ceased racing while the crews ahead continued.
The two crews involved in the bump then exchanged places the next
race, usually two or three evenings later.
The rules of racing were revised some years later to include the present
system of bunglines, and a 'three gun' system for starting, as well as
regulating the number of racing days, which in some years previous,
had reached as high as 9 days. These of course, have been altered may times over the course of history, and currently exist as an extensive set of guidelines.
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The Isis also looked very different. There was a lock at Folly Bridge - the remains of which can still be seen today, as well as a weir. There were no boathouses downstream, just the 'King's Barge' moored alongside Christ Church meadow, and this served as the finishing post for bumping races, upon which it was customary to indicate the results of each day's racing by order of college flags raised on the barge flagpole. [1]
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College rowing on the Isis - 1844
John Whessell (1760 - 1828) – A Boat Race on the River Isis, Oxford 1822
Nathaniel Whittock (1791 – 1860) - Print of the River Isis from The Microcosm of Oxford 1845
LMHBC Establishment and Early days
as told by Herbie Knott and Monica Fisher (née Pring-Mill)
Since LMH was founded in 1878 as an women's only college, and remained that way until 1979, LMHBC was not permitted to take part in college racing until the late 60's:
​"In May 1969 the ladies of LMH decided that it was unfair to be excluded from participation in the Summer VIII's and following determined badgering they were granted special dispensation to race a crew from Keble.
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Coxed by Irene Hogg (LMH 1968-71) they learned to row in perfect synchronicity with 6am starts on the water. Determined to make the most of the occasion they also worked late into the night using an old hand-cranked Singer machine to sew their all-white kit, embellished with stylish red sashes. Anticipating Vivienne Westwood by a full 30 years, their skirts were designed to rip-off at launch, revealing red shorts.
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​​​​​​​​​​​As the picture clearly shows, the LMH Ladies
proceeded serenely up-river, keeping perfect
time, unlike the boys from Keble, seen
splashing incontinently in the background.
The event attracted National and
International press coverage, including a
memorable 'Private Eye' front cover.
Sadly, History does not record the winner. [2]
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Though the LMH women who rowed against
Keble never made it to Summer Eights that
year (St Hilda's being the only all women boat
to qualify in the Men's division they were
placed in), they were finally successful upon
introduction of Women's division in 1976:​
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"I came up in October 1972 but had nothing
to do with rowing until I met my now husband
(Balliol 1st VIII) who got me interested in the
sport a year later. [...] I started rowing in
Spring '74 and was aware that Lyndsay Mountford (PPE 1972) was rowing in the Women's Blue Boat - described by a St Hugh's friend, with whom I rowed in the Blue Boat the following year, as "a random group of 8 willing women who had been taught to wield an oar" as there was no real structure to women's rowing at that time. LMH rowed in white tops and I chose to use Dragon School socks as they were LMH colours (navy with yellow tops) and were readily available from the school’s outfitters - so at least we looked like a proper crew
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We entered the Wolfson Regatta (for women’s crews only) in Trinity '74 and
won the event.
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I became the LMH Captain of Boats in October 1974 and we had no equipment
or coaches. Diana Willmott had a boyfriend, Mike Berry, who was the Captain
of Boats at Christ Church and as most of the boat houses served two colleges
but Christ Church had their own, we homed in on them. I managed to negotiate
an arrangement with the boatman at Christ Church to borrow their boats and
blades, and the JCR agreed to pay £100 a year.
Sue Chisman (1973) succeeded me as LMH Captain of Boats and I have a copy
of a flyer she posted on the notice board in October '75 seeking new rowers. It
refers to a Women's Intercollege IV's Regatta in 7th week of Trinity term '75,
into which LMH entered 2 crews. This was a Women's event, as Eights Week
was a male event although a St Hilda's [Women] VIII had rowed-on in the
bottom division (1969).
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Photo of the LMH women racing the Keble men on the Isis in 1969
LMH came 1st and 2nd in the Intercollege IVs.
I went on to row in the Blue Boat in '75 (lost on the Cam) and '76 (won on the
Isis). I was then elected as President of OUWBC, and some say that because of
the ignominy of a male crew being bumped by the female St Hilda's crew the
previous year, it was decided to have Women's divisions in Eights Week.
However, this was also the year in which 5 men's colleges first admitted women
undergraduates (Brasenose, Hertford, Jesus, St Catz and Wadham) so there were
quite a number of women (including graduate students at other colleges) with
access to boats. We had also started a 2nd crew at OUWBC, Osiris (named by
my fiancé, as Osiris was the husband of Isis it seemed appropriate) so there were many more women involved with rowing at Oxford at that time [...]
Copy of the flyer posted by Sue Chisman - October 1975
Women's Blue Boat 1976 - Sue Chisman (C), Monica Pring-Mill (7)
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Women's Blue Boat 1976 - Sue Chisman (front), Monica Pring-Mill (middle left)
Osiris 1977 - LMHers Michele Roche (middle), Sarah Wookey (back, right), and Sharon Jones (back, second right)
[...] Working with the OUBC Committee it was agreed that there would be 2 Women's Divisions in Summer Eights in 1976 and Andy Baird, the OUBC President, decided that the 1st VIII of the OUWBC President's college should start at the Head of the River, with the other crews drawn randomly thereafter.
The starting order was :
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[...] LMH's 1st VIII rowed over on the first day, but were bumped by Wadham on the second day (and then rowed over on the third and fourth day ending up second on the river). LMH II had rowed over twice, LMH III rowed over then were bumped and LMH IV were bumped and then rowed over. We were the only college with four crews, and there were only two colleges, Somerville and Wadham, with three." [3]​​​
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LMH regained the title of Head of The River on the second day of Summer Eights in 1978.
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Women's Division I:
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LMH
Wadham
St Catherine's
St Hugh's
Wolfson
Somerville
St Hilda's
Hertford
Jesus
St Anne's
Linacre
Brasenose
Women's Division II:
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Wadham II
Corpus Christi
LMH II
Somerville II
St Catherine's II
St Hilda's II
St Anne's II
LMH III
Wadham III
St Hugh's II
Linacre II
LMH IV
Somerville III
LMH rowing in the first ever Women's division - May 1976
Introduction of Men's Rowing at LMH
as told by Jon Dwyer
"I went up to LMH in 1979, the first year that the college had become mixed. I had
already spectated at Eights Week, because my older sister had rowed stroke of
the St Anne’s first eight, so I’d already decided I wanted to be involved. I remember that,
within the first week of term, new students were invited to an LMHBC meeting led by
boat club captain, Sarah Gilpin-Brown. We heard that the boat club needed female
rowers as the first eight was fourth on the river, and any male students interested in
rowing would row for Magdalen College because of a reciprocal agreement between the
two clubs - Magdalen had admitted female students for the first time, so any Magdalen
women who wanted to row, would row for LMH. I was very disappointed as I didn’t
want to row for Magdalen.
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I told Sarah that I didn’t want to row for Magdalen and I asked whether, if we could find
enough men to make a crew, we could row as an LMH eight. She seemed surprised, but
pleased, saying that she would be interested in coaching the crew, if we could put one
together. Given that there were so few male students, it was quite easy to ask every one
of them, individually, if they would be willing to row for the college. I think it only took
a couple of days for me to get back to Sarah with eight names for the crew.
We were to use a clinker-built wooden boat with very short slides, and a set of blades that were the older set of two sets LMHBC owned. We were to be coached by Sarah and by Carol Gysin, the former LMHBC captain, and we were entered for Christchurch Regatta, in the novice category.
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When regatta time came around, we found ourselves drawn against Christchurch I, who were expected to win the novice category. I caught a crab and lost my blade over my head on about the third stroke of the start, but got it back and we rowed quite well to the finish, although a long way behind Christchurch I. We did attract a lot of attention and even got mentioned in an Oxford Mail report about the event, because nobody had expected LMHBC to have a crew on the river so soon!
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At the start of Hilary Term, there were a couple of rowers who left the crew, because their own favoured sports were getting started. Once again, I spoke to each male student, individually, and recruited five more, so we had to have ‘trials’ for places in the crew. I was selected, but my friend, Peter Kelly, wasn’t, despite his having been in the Christchurch Regatta crew. I asked Sarah whether, if I could find enough people, we could form a second crew. She told me that this wouldn’t be possible, because LMHBC only had two boats and two sets of blades, plus there was nobody willing to coach. I’d noticed a dusty old boat on the racks in Magdalen’s boathouse, so I wrote a message to the Magdalen Captain of Boats, to ask if they had a boat we could use. In his reply, the Magdalen Captain said that all of Magdalen’s boats were being used, so they could not let us use one. I could tell that this particular boat wasn’t being used, because of the layer of dust on it, so I tied black cotton threads between the boat and its rack, which would break if the boat was moved.
After a week, it hadn’t been moved, so I wrote again, to the Magdalen Captain, this time saying which of the boats I wanted to be allowed to use. He wrote back, saying that it was a very old boat, that Magdalen had been intending to sell to whoever was Head of the River, that year, for a boat-burning ceremony! I asked how much they would sell the boat for and, once I had the figure, (£180, as I remember), I persuaded the LMHBC committee to buy this old boat, for the good of men’s rowing!
It was a ‘restricted shell’ eight that, although it had been repaired many times, was watertight and it became LMH men’s boat, shared by the first and the (newly formed) second crew, most of whom were novices. I offered to coach the men’s second crew, literally doing the same set of exercises that we’d just done in the first crew.
The first crew was coached by Caroline Brown and her boyfriend Hugh Pymm, from Christchurch, (who is now a well-known news-reporter). Carolyn then switched from coaching to coxing the crew, leaving Hugh as our coach.
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The first crew rowed on, for Torpids, and I don’t think the second crew were successful. In Torpids, the first crew rowed over on all four days. Each day, my seat would come off its rails, somewhere on the course, basically because I was trying far too hard and yelling encouragement to my crew-mates as I rowed. I think we hit the bank off the start on one of the days, so the crew behind us was awarded a technical bump against us, even though they didn’t hit us and, if fact, we rowed away from them once we got going. By the Trinity Term, we were a respectable crew, having rowed together for quite a long time.
I did feel proud that, even competing in the rowing-on divisions, people were starting to notice that men’s rowing was really taking off at LMH, whereas at St Annes, who had also gone mixed at the same time, it wasn’t.​
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In the Trinity term, LMHBC Committee positions came up for nomination and my name was put up for Captain of Boats. I had the full support of both men’s crews, and from a women’s third eight I had occasionally coached in the summer term. The outgoing committee could see that I was likely to be elected, which they didn’t want, so they took the nominations sheets off the noticeboard and put new sheets up, on which they had created a new committee position of ‘Men’s Captain’. It annoyed me, because it was listed below Captain, Secretary and Treasurer, all of which had nominations for women’s first eight crew members. I made my objections clear to the outgoing committee, but they wouldn’t change their minds to allow me to stand as Captain of Boats, so I came up with a plan: I would stand for the position of Boat Club Secretary and my crew-mate Phil Harris, would stand for the position of Men’s Captain.
To accommodate the people the outgoing committee had wanted to take over, a post ‘Captain of Coxes’ was created. This wrangling was to prove hugely significant, the following year!
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At the start of my second year, Phil Harris and I set about recruiting a lot of the new male students to join LMHBC. As I remember, we had two novice crews for Christchurch Regatta, whereas the women had only one novice crew. At this point in time, the rivalry between men’s rowing and women’s rowing was intense. The men felt that the women’s first eight were aloof and superior, telling us they were a First-Division crew, whereas we would have to row on. We countered that by training much harder and having more rowers!
During Michaelmas Term, it was announced that Dame Lucy Sutherland had left a large financial legacy to the college and, because the Boat Club committee had only just appealed to the college for more funds, (and been told there was no money), it was decided that the Boat Club would receive a large part of this donation. The Captain of Boats, Melanie Roome, immediately said that the women’s first eight should get a new boat and that there would be sufficient money for the men to have a second-hand boat! The boat she favoured, for the women, was to be built by Eton Boats. I did some research and found that, instead, if we bought two new boats from Simms of Putney, we could have two new boats for the price of the Eton Boat, and still have money left for two sets of new blades. The five members of the committee met to vote on the plans. Significantly, the Captain of Coxes had switched from coxing women’s crews, the year before, to coxing men’s crews that term, so men’s rowing prevailed.
We ordered the two Simms boats and two sets of new blades, from Collar Blades of Hinksey. The sets of blades were to be one general set of men’s blades and one set of special stiff, lightweight blades that were to be shared by the men’s and women’s first eights, Collar Blades having assured me that the lightweight blades would be suitable for both crews: I did specify very large ‘spoons’ on those blades, however!
The sets of blades arrived first and the men’s first eight crew loved them straightaway, while the women’s first eight crew decided they would need to adjust the gearing by about 5cm, inboard, to row with them. The women persuaded the men’s crew that we had to put the gearing back to their setting after our outings, which we resented and deliberately ‘forgot’… we even superglued the collars in the position we were using! There was also a dispute about painting the ‘spears’ onto the blades as LMH colours: the men wanted gold, whereas the women wanted yellow. After a couple of weeks of being called Christchurch, whenever we went out, (because of our plain blades), the women’s crew sneaked down to the boathouse, one morning, and quickly painted yellow spears on the blades. The trouble was that they hadn’t used the right tape for masking, so the result was horrendous! The men declared their right to rectify the mess and paint the gold spears successfully.
When the new boats arrived, the women’s boat was called ‘Dame Lucy Sutherland’ and the men’s boat, ‘Duncan Stewart’. They were identical, apart from the men’s boat being built for a higher average weight. The men started to go fast in the new boat and we raved about how good it was. The women had niggly complaints, which the men felt was just sour-grapes because they hadn’t been able to buy the boat they had originally wanted.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
First ever LMHBC men's VIII - Summer Eights 1980
In Torpids, the men’s first eight was expected to row on as the fastest crew, but my old Achilles heel of my seat coming off the rails intervened and, to my shame, we only rowed on in third place. In the event, we achieved four quick bumps, never getting properly into our stride, and we ended up at the bottom of the fixed divisions, as far as I remember. We had three men’s eights racing and the women had two. The men’s first eight won blades for the first time, although the disappointment of not having been the fastest rowing-on crew made us feel we hadn’t really reached our target.
We put that right in Eights Week, rowing on fastest and achieving another four quick bumps. We asked OUBC what was the fastest rowing-on time hat had been recorded in the event’s history, and found we had beaten it comfortably: The time of 2min 31s is one I remember to this day!
Between rowing-on and the Wednesday of Eights Week, it rained heavily and the river was in flood. OUBC announced that the rowing-on divisions were to be cancelled, in the interests of safety and that we couldn’t take part. It was disastrous news, and the whole crew went to visit the OUBC President, at Christchurch College, to plead to be allowed to start from the bottom bung-line. Initially, this was refused, but we said we wouldn’t leave the room until we were allowed to compete… we got our way!
LMH men’s rowing settled into a pattern, with the first eight winning blades in every bumps series, I was doing a four-year degree course, so I rowed again, through my third-year, now installed as a bowside stroke, which I absolutely loved. Eights week was particularly notable, because we got six bumps, instead of the four we were expecting: it took us until the start of the Green Bank to get that over-bump. At the end of that term, (I think it was), the men’s first eight went ‘pot-hunting’, for the first time, entering Peterborough Regatta. We won the novice category, but in a course record time, beating Bedford School and Bedford Modern School crews. We knew we were good, but hadn’t realised we were quite that good!
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Also in that term, after Eights Week, both the men’s first eight and the women’s first eight did a long row, down to Abingdon, as a fundraiser.
In my fourth year, two men’s crews were taken to Reading Head of the River, before Torpids and, I still believe, the men's second eight beat the men’s first eight. I can’t be sure, but I remember the Men’s Captain, Blair Crawford, going into the race HQ, to get the results and, when he rejoined us, he wouldn’t say what the results were, other than that both crews had ‘done well’. The men’s second eight didn’t manage to get onto the fixed divisions, in either Torpids or Eights, that year, but we were very close. I put that down to the fact that we were still using a very average set of blades so, as my parting gift to LMHBC, I bought a set of the special stiff, lightweight blades so that both crews could use them.
The 1990's photo archive
Christ Church regatta - 1995
Men's 1st VIII - Eights 1995
Christ Church Regatta - 1994
Christ Church Regatta - 1994
Women's 1st VIII - WeHoRR 1994
Summer VIIIs - 1994
Christ Church regatta - 1994
Torpids - 1996
Summer Eights
Summer VIIIs - 1996
Torpids - 1996
[1] History of Oxford rowing in the 1800's as originally written by A Dudhia, 2000, as part of A History of St Catherine's Rowing 1875-1999. Now available at https://eodg.atm.ox.ac.uk/user/dudhia/rowing/history.html
[2] First recorded mention of LMH entering a boat in Rowing On as recounted by University College alumni Herbie Knott (1968-1971)
[3] Notes from a speech given by Monica Fisher (née Pring-Mill) at an LMHBC dinner in June 2010 detailing racing from 1974-1978, and the introduction of women's divisions to Summer Eights.
[4] LMHBC memories sent in by Jon Dwyer