Leander Club

Leander Club stands beside the River Thames at Henley-on-Thames in Berkshire. Founded in 1818 or 1819 by members of the old Star and Arrow Clubs, it is the oldest non-academic rowing club in the world. The club moved to its present site in Henley in 1897 after earlier homes in London and Putney. For 179 years it admitted only men, but women have been members since 1998. Leander supplied 23 of the 45 British rowers chosen for the 2020 Summer Olympics. The club’s history is woven through British rowing. In 1831 it beat Oxford University in a race from Hambleden Lock to Henley Bridge. Lord Esher once praised its members as the finest rowers seen anywhere, though he added they were verging on middle age. Leander was also the first club to support young watermen and to award scullers a coat and badge. Its Putney boathouse served until 1961, while the Henley clubhouse has housed trophies such as Thomas Lowther Jenkins’ winner’s medal, found in a Belfast junk shop over a century later. Visitors find a riverside clubhouse built in 1897, with trophy cabinets and a collection of oars and memorabilia. The site adjoins Henley-on-Thames and looks across the water to Remenham. The club’s ties appear in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and in detective novels by Deborah Crombie. Rowers and visitors alike can walk along the Thames path and see the stretch where early races were held.