Auriol Kensington Rowing Club:

The President

Today, the club has around 170 members across a men’s, women’s, and vet’s squad as well as a development group for new rowers. After an extensive remodelling project completed in 2014 the clubhouse is now large enough to accommodate its growing membership.

Julie Watson, AKRC president, said: “I think it’s a club where you can take rowing seriously but you can also have a bit of fun and nobody is excluded, everyone can be part of it.”

The 57-year-old came to the club in 1987 as a coxswain, the person steering the boat, when women were still excluded from becoming rowing members. While some women had begun to row in late Victorian times, it remained unusual to see women row competitively until the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Julie said: “I was competing with another girl for the coxswain seat to cox a senior men’s crew at Henley and the other girl won.”

Having taken a liking to the sport, Julie decided to start rowing by herself and quickly began winning races. However, at the time British Rowing, a national governing body for rowing, mandated that anyone participating in races needed to be a member of a club.

She continued: “So, some of the older men from the club proposed me at an AGM and I was made the first fully-fledged female member of the club in 1990.”

The women’s squad expanded rapidly thereafter and the club entered its first crew at Henley Women’s Regatta two years later. Julie herself also enjoyed remarkable success, becoming a finalist in the Henley Women’s double event, competing in the qualifiers for the first ever women's event at Henley Royal Regatta, and winning bronze in the lightweight singles at the National Championships.

The charity worker, who previously worked in the Department of Clinical Parasitology at the Hospital for Tropical Disease, said: “My favourite thing about rowing is being out on the water, either by myself or in a crew and having a good outing. It’s a way of mentally relaxing.”

Julie’s proudest moments of her time at AKRC included being elected as the first female president last year and having had a boat named after her. The ‘Julie Watson’ is now frequently used by the vets – the very men who had first welcomed her to the club as a coxswain more than forty years ago.

The Auriol Man

Rowing on the Tideway in the 1950s, however, looked drastically different to today. Back then the Thames was still a commercial river frequently used by large barges and tugboats.

Michael Lepper remembered: “The river was a fearsome project and rowing was really dangerous. God, you don’t know what it was like, dead dogs, cats, rats, it really was foul.”

The 82-year-old came to Auriol Rowing Club at the age of 13 as a coxswain and learned to row two years later in 1955. At almost 70 years, Michael is the longest serving still active member of AKRC and has seen the Tideway change dramatically during that time.

The banks of the Thames were populated with hundreds of factories, which would dump driftwood and refuse in the water, he remembered. The wood, which often had nails and bolts sticking out, would pile up on the water and could easily puncture a boat, back then only made of thin wood rather than durable plastic.

Michael said: “At high tide, you could have walked across the river on the amount of driftwood that collected on the Hammersmith corner. It was a work of art to steer in those days.”

The veteran rower fondly remembers his time as a young man when the boat house bar barely ever shut and he spent most Saturday nights sleeping at the club house. During that time rowing was still a primarily male affair. His wife Dorothy, for example, recalled having to wait for express permission from a senior member to be allowed to enter the boat house whenever she met up with Michael after an outing.

Michael said: “I think rowing definitely changed for the better, mainly because ladies are now rowing as well.”