Leander Club

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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.[http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22196 Sport, ancient and modern: Pastimes, A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 2: General pp. 283–292. Date accessed: 8 October 2008] "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.{{cite book

| author= Woodgate, W.B.

| title = The Badmington library - "Boating"

| publisher = Spottiswoode & co

| year = 1891

}}

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:{{blockquote|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."

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. 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).{{cite book

|author1=Burnell, Richard |author2=Page, Geoffrey

| title = The Brilliants - A History of the Leander Club

| publisher = Leander Club

| year = 1997

| isbn = 0-9500061-1-4}}

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.{{cite web | url=http://www.britishrowing.org/about-us/strategy-structure | title=Corporate Governance Structure | publisher=British Rowing | access-date=31 January 2013 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120001107/http://www.britishrowing.org/about-us/strategy-structure | archive-date=20 January 2013 }}

Leander members contributed 23 of the 45 British rowers selected for the 2020 Summer Olympics.{{cite web|url=https://www.britishrowing.org/2021/06/british-olympic-association-selects-olympic-rowing-team-for-tokyo-2020/|title=British Olympic Association selects Olympic rowing team for Tokyo 2020|website=British Rowing|date=9 June 2021|access-date=11 June 2021}}

Notable members include:

{{div col|colwidth=15em}}

• Jack Beaumont
• Karen Bennett
• Robin Bourne-Taylor
• Chloe Brew
• Sholto Carnegie
• John Collins
• Ed Coode
• James Cracknell
• Jacob Dawson
• Katherine Douglas
• Rebecca Edwards
• Charles Elwes
• Henry Fieldman
• Debbie Flood
• Emily Ford
• Thomas Ford
• Tim Foster
• Fiona Gammond
• Thomas George
• Harcourt Gilbey Gold
• Jürgen Gröbler
• Angus Groom
• Mark Hunter
• Frederick Septimus Kelly
• Hugh Laurie
• Ran Laurie
• Harry Leask
• Stuart Mackenzie
• Alexander McCulloch
• Rowan McKellar
• Gully Nickalls
• Guy Nickalls
• Alex Partridge
• Matthew Pinsent
• Steve Redgrave
• Pete Reed
• Rebecca Romero
• Matthew Rossiter
• Will Satch
• Hannah Scott
• Colin Smith
• Tom Stallard
• Polly Swann
• Victoria Thornley
• Anna Watkins
• Josh West
• Steve Williams
• Oliver Wynne-Griffith

{{div col end}}

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.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.208486|title=Brideshead Revisited|last=Waugh Evelyn|date=1945}}^: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).{{Cite news|url=https://heartheboatsing.com/2013/03/22/an-act-of-waugh/|title=An Act of Waugh|date=2013-03-22|work=Hear The Boat Sing|access-date=2018-06-13|language=en-GB}} 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...."Thirkell, "Growing Up," at p. 253 (Chapter 11) (Wakefield, RI: Moyer Bell, 1996). The Leander Club figures heavily in Deborah Crombie's detective novel, No Mark Upon Her.

Key

• J (junior), 2, 4, 8 (crew size), 18, 16, 15, 14 (age group), x (sculls), - (coxless), + (coxed)

+ composite

{{Portal|United Kingdom|Transport}}

• Henley Royal Regatta
• London Rowing Club
• Thames Rowing Club
• Rowing on the River Thames

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.leander.co.uk/ Leander Club official website]

{{Authority control}}

{{United Kingdom rowing clubs}}

Category:1818 establishments in England

Category:Sports clubs and teams established in the 1810s

Category:Rowing clubs of the River Thames

Category:Henley-on-Thames

Category:Boathouses in the United Kingdom

Category:Henley Royal Regatta

Category:Sports clubs and teams in Berkshire

Category:Rowing in Berkshire

Category:History of rowing

Category:Remenham