5 March 2024
By William O’Chee
While there are a plethora of books associating Winston Church with a variety of topics – “Churchill and the Admirals”, “Churchill and Roosevelt”, “Churchill and Lloyd George”, “Churchill and Australia”, for example – the one topic few associate with the great man is rowing.
Because Churchill attended Harrow, not Eton as his father did, there has long been a presumption that Churchill had no connection with rowing at all.
History is a fickle master, however, when not given due respect. In fact, Winston Churchill was not unfamiliar with rowing, even if he was not a competitive oarsman. More importantly, it can now be revealed that the aristocratic Churchill family had a historic connection to recreational boating that went as far back as the eighteenth century.
It is helpful to begin with Winston Churchill’s personal association with rowing. Today, the image most people have of Churchill is that of a rotund elder statesman, perhaps with a walking stick. Of course, this wasn’t always so. As a young man, Churchill was enthusiastic about many sports, and won a fencing prize at Harrow. He also seems to have known how to row, at least after a fashion.
Churchill reflected on rowing in his autobiography, My Early Life, published in 1930. Writing of his time at Harrow, he said:
I enjoyed the Harrow songs. They have an incomparable book of school songs. At intervals we used to gather in the Speech Room or even in our own Houses, and sing these splendid and famous choruses. I believe these songs are the greatest treasure that Harrow possesses. There is certainly nothing like them at Eton. There they have only got one song and that about Rowing, which though good exercise is poor sport and poorer poetry. [i]
At first sight, this seems rather dismissive, although he did admit rowing was good exercise. In reality, Churchill considered rowing rather more favourably than that. In 1893, after gaining entrance to Sandhurst, Churchill went on a holiday to Italy with his brother Jack and a tutor, Mr Little. While in Italy, trio journeyed from Milan to Baveno – a distance of about 95km – for the specific purpose of undertaking a rowing expedition on Lake Maggiore. [ii] This suggests Churchill not only enjoyed boating, but also had some passing familiarity with it.
In August the following year, Churchill, Jack and Little again sojourned to Europe, where they visited Belgium and Switzerland. While in Lucerne, Churchill and Jack hired a boat to go rowing on the lake, an outing which almost resulted in their both drowning when they went swimming and the boat was blown away. Churchill recounted that he swam furiously, and on his third attempt managed to get back into the boat, before rowing as fast as he could to rescue his brother. [iii]
In all probability, these weren’t Churchill’s only outings in a rowing boat, although we seemingly have no other written evidence to prove it. So, how did this familiarity with boating arise? Interestingly, if not quite at home, then at least at the place of his birth.
Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of Lord John Spencer-Churchill, the seventh Duke of Marlborough, although at the time of his birth, the dukedom was held by Lord Randolph’s grandfather, the sixth Duke. The Spencer-Churchill family were descendants of John Churchill, who was created the Earl of Marlborough by William III as a reward for his role in the Glorious Revolution. Years later, his successful campaigns against the French in the War of the Spanish Succession saw him elevated to become Duke of Marlborough.
His victories saw him rewarded with the previously royal manor of Woodstock, while Parliament also voted him a substantial sum to finance the building of an estate befitting a duke, which became Blenheim Palace. The original architect for this project was Sir John Vanbrugh, although the final work on the palace was completed by his protégé, Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Running through the estate was the River Glyme, a small stream that was a tributary of the Evenlode. This stream had been largely untouched until the fourth Duke recruited a young Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to landscape the park. Principal among his works was the damming of the Glyme to create a lake in front of the house, as well as a series of ornamental cascades.
Brown landscaped some 170 estates, most of which involved lakes. Many of his clients invested in boats to enjoy these lakes. Kate Felus, a historian of landscape gardening, has documented a number of Brown’s lakes, and notes “…the pleasure of boating was a major reason for the creation of the water body and, moreover, that the scale and shape was also, at least partly, determined by use for boating.” [iv]
Boating seems to have taken place even before this. Vanbrugh’s Grand Bridge, built in 1708 contained a bathing room and a boathouse. However, these were flooded by Brown’s works in 1760. [v]
We know that boating was still taking place at Blenheim in the 1770s. In December 1779, a local boy, aged about nine, died after he and three companions stole a boat that was moored to a tree beside the lake. He fell into the water and drowned. This we know from a newspaper account of the time.
Despite this, until now we have had no clear idea of what the boat, or boats, were in use at Blenheim Palace at this time. Surprisingly, this evidence has been hiding in plain sight.
In September 1922, Churchill purchased Chartwell, a country house near Westerham in Kent, and lived there for the remainder of his life. On his death, Lady Churchill presented the house to the National Trust, which maintains the property to this day. Churchill’s study, where he wrote his works, is on the first floor. At one end, opposite his desk, hangs a handsome painting of Blenheim Palace, which is dated to between 1770 and 1779, although the painter is unknown.
The palace is viewed from across the lake from a vantage point near Rosamund’s Well, with the Grand Bridge on the left. Commanding the centre of the picture is an elegant state barge, while in the foreground is another boat being pulled up on the bank. There are two more boats in the painting; one is on the left near the bridge, and another is in the shadows on the right of the painting.
While being somewhat free of the “tyranny of place”, landscape painters of the time did nonetheless have to produce reasonably accurate portrayals of their subjects when undertaking commissions for wealthy patrons. They also had to produce paintings that showed life as their patrons wished it to be. The unknown artist at work here was at great pains to show the lake alive with boating of all sorts, because it was part of life at Blenheim at the time, and because this life appealed to his patron, the fourth Duke.
As mentioned, the foreground of the painting is dominated by a state barge cruising on the lake with two large flags flying at the stern and bow. These would have born heraldic devices pertaining to the duke and his family. Also prominent are the high rudder and stern post, as well as a large cabin which takes up roughly half the length of the hull. The duke’s state barge bears more than a passing similarity to the Royal Barge, built in 1732 for Frederick, Prince of Wales, and designed by William Kent, the landscape architect. This barge is still in existence and can be observed at the National Maritime Museum in London. It is likely that Kent was chosen to design the Royal Barge because he had designed other boats for noble patrons who had employed him to build lakes on their estates.
Both boats are clinker built, although the cabin of the duke’s barge is longer than that of the Royal Barge. This is in part because the latter was intended to be rowed on the Tideway and required sufficient space for thwarts for 21 oarsmen. The duke’s barge, being rowed on a lake, required fewer oarsmen, and so could provide more space for guests. Both boats are low at the prow, with a shallower draft forwards than aft. This was a pragmatic design feature intended to allow for the boats to be brought ashore on the riverbank or the edge of the lake, and for passengers to alight easily.
The interesting thing about the state barge in the painting of Blenheim is that no oarsmen appear to be rowing it. It is possible that it was simply anchored at the time in the middle of the lake to provide an aquatic venue for the duke and his guests.
This is entirely plausible when one examines the boat at the very foreground of the painting, which is depicted being dragged ashore. A servant in livery is seen straining to pull down on one side of the bow to allow passengers to embark and disembark, while another liveried servant seems to be leaning on a punt pole to keep the stern in place. The passengers are all in their finery, among them a lady in a voluminous dress, and several men in frock coats. A man in a gold frock coat and carrying a walking stick seems to have just disembarked and is walking away.
Curiously, this boat does not seem to have any oarsmen, although a rowlock can be seen on the starboard side, level with one of the thwarts. It is possible that the lake was shallow enough to have allowed it to be punted to and from the state barge, even if its design is not that of a typical punt. This would, of course, have allowed more passengers to be carried since the absence of oarsmen would have freed up the thwart.
There certainly was rowing taking place on the lake, though, as is evidenced by two other boats shown in the painting. To the left hand side of the picture a four oared boat with a small cabin can be seen emerging from the central span of the Grand Bridge. While one person sits in the stern, presumably controlling the rudder, four men in shirt sleeves are seated on two thwarts, at work on the oars.
While it is tempting to assume that the oarsmen were servants, this need not be so. Although rowing was hard work, London watermen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were generally attired with a coat of some sort, and depicted as such in paintings and drawings of the day. Their dress, while superficially impractical, had a purpose since it showed them to be freemen of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen. In London, the wealthy kept their own boats, and men to row them. In 1861, Henry Mayhew wrote:
From the termination of the wars of the Roses, until the end of the 17th century, for about 200 years, all the magnates of the metropolis, the king, the members of the royal family, the great officers of state, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the noblemen whose mansions had sprung up amidst trees and gardens on the north bank of the Thames, the Lord Mayor, the City authorities, the City Companies, and the Inns of Court, all kept their own or their state barges, rowed by their own servants, attired in their respective liveries. [vi]
As the purpose of a grand estate was to impress, there would seem little reason for the aristocracy to dispense with their servants wearing livery when rowing on their lakes, and indeed it is clear from the painting that the Duke of Marlborough did not. It therefore seems possible, if not probable, that the men rowing in their shirt sleeves were in fact gentlemen at leisure. While servants were expected to wear uniforms, the gentry and aristocracy could do as they wished. Indeed, this is attested in a newspaper article from May 1802, which recorded “Duke of Manchester, Lord Craven, and a large party of gentlemen fond of aquatic exercise” made a purse of twenty guineas to be rowed for by watermen, and that “…notwithstanding the unfavourabilities of the weather, the noble boatmen were stripped and at the oar during the whole of the match [i.e. they were following the race], after which they dined at the Cumberland Gardens.” [vii] It would appear possible that the oarsmen in this boat were doing much the same thing.
Additionally, on the right hand side of the painting is another boat, this one containing a sculler in shirt sleeves, and a steerer in a blue coat. This is possibly a livery coat, although he is wearing a top hat rather than a cap, and therefore the steerer may have been a gentleman.
We are left with the impression that recreational boats in various forms were an important part of life at Blenheim Palace in the eighteenth century. This seems surprising, but it should not be so. Rowing was most definitely practised at Blenheim in the eighteenth century. Its significance is that it was one of Brown’s earlier commissions, and therefore played a role in establishing Brown’s oeuvre. Moreover, being the estate of a duke, Blenheim gave boating a social acceptability that might not have shined so brightly as on the estate of a member of the landed gentry, or even a lesser noble.
Research by the author shows that many estates surrounding the upper reaches of the Thames gained lakes and boats in the course of the eighteenth century. Thame Park, the seat of the Viscount Wenman, was one such place, as were nearby Stowe and Wotton Underwood, owned by the Grenville-Temple family. The family’s estate records showed that in 1776, an expense of £2 was paid to bring what was presumably a substantial boat from Lambeth to Wotton Underwood. [viii] As at Blenheim at this time, the boats at Thame Park and Wotton Underwood were used for aristocratic pleasure and exercise.
Although Churchill was born roughly 100 years after the Blenheim painting was made, aquatic pursuits at Blenheim seemed little different in his childhood. In fact, boating on the lake was sufficiently popular in the family for a boathouse to be built in 1888. During the life of his grandfather, the seventh Duke, young Winston often visited Blenheim, and this continued after his grandfather’s death. For example, in 1888, the year the boathouse was built, he stayed over Christmas with his grandmother, the dowager Duchess. It was at Blenheim that Churchill prosed to his wife Clementine, and as he was close to his cousin, the ninth Duke, Churchill was a frequent visitor throughout his life. In all of this, it seems reasonable to assume that he would have become moderately acquainted with recreational boating, and to have liked it enough to pursue it on his European holidays.
As a final observation, it is worth noting that Churchill’s manor of Chartwell included its own small lake at the bottom of the hill, a lake which he could view from the house, as he was wont to do. It was also a subject he painted on numerous occasions. It is tempting to think that Churchill took as much pleasure from this as he did from gazing at the painting of Blenheim’s lake in his study, and recalling his paddling about the lake in the days of his youth.
The author is grateful for the kind assistance of Katherine Carter and Nicole Day of the National Trust, as well as Marcus Ray, in the preparation of this article.
Information on Chartwell can be found here. The house is open to the public daily from 11:00 until 15:40.
Endnotes
[i]Churchill, W.S. My Early Life, Thornton Butterworth Limited, London, 1930, p 55.
[ii]Gilbert, M. Churchill: A Life, Pimlico, London, 1991, p 39.
[iii]ibid, p 45.
[iv]Felus, K., ‘Chaises, grotto, fishing, all in perfection’: The Social Context of Brown’s Landscape Designs. In Finch, J. and Woudstra, J. (Eds.), Capability Brown, Royal Gardener: The business of place-making in Northern Europe, White Rose University Press, York, 2020, pp 137-150.
[v]Elwes, A., ‘Blenheim Palace’s lost ballroom, theatre and chambers seen for the first time in 250 years’ in Country Life, 16th January 2019.
[vi]Mayhew, H. London Labour and The London Poor Volume 3, London, 1861, p 327.
[vii]Morning Post, 16th June 1801.
[viii]Museum of English Rural Life FR BUC/11/1/10