The Website of Champions

Alan Campbell of Tideway Scullers passing the winning post in the 2010 Wingfield Sculls.

Tim Koch writes:

In 1830, H.C. Wingfield established a single sculling race for amateurs to be run on the Thames with a prize of a pair of silver sculls ‘to be held by the best’. Seven years later, Charles Babbage proposed the first general-purpose computer concept, the Analytical Engine. In 2015, the two finally came together when www.wingfieldsculls.com went online, proving information and results on both the Wingfield Sculls and also on the Women’s Wingfields, established in 2007. However, the site is not just concerned with the current races, it is also an archive of the 186 years of the men’s race and of the eight years of the women’s event. It is always good to welcome another rowing history source to the World Wide Web and I am sure that the credit for this can go to the secretary of the Wingfield Sculls, the 1993 winner or ‘Champion’, Wade Hall-Craggs. Not only has Wade preserved the race archive that he inherited on taking over as secretary, he has also added to it considerably, filling in historical gaps from numerous sources and presenting the material in a meticulous manner.

Wade Hall-Craggs adds to the archive at the 2015 races.

HTBS types will particularly enjoy the biographies of the eighty-eight men and seven women who have held the title ‘Champion’. I am sure that many of you can add to some of these histories and perhaps supply pictures of those whose image is not yet recorded. As the site says ‘If you have any questions, information, knowledge, photos or anything regarding The Wingfield Sculls then please get in touch’.

The 1912 Wingfield Sculls. At Hammersmith Bridge, W.D. Kinnear of Kensington RC leads E.D.P. Pinks of London RC. The bowmen of the following eights are not rowing and are facing the bow, each directing their respective man, something allowed under the race rules then and now (though nowadays it is done from motorboats).