HEREFORD BOATHOUSE - FLOTILLA COMMAND

As a Victorian visitor to Hereford once wrote on his postcard home:

"This is one of the finest rivers in England for Boating...."
River Wye - looking towards the Old Bridge in the distance.

Hereford Regatta, on the River Wye, was a famous rowing event from its inception in 1859, the Regatta Course running from the Old Bridge to Hunderton Railway Bridge:

Reverse view - the Regatta Course viewed from the Old Bridge
toward the Hunderton Railway Bridge.

Approximately the same view - but colourised.

Given the success of the Regatta, it wasn't too long (probably around the turn of the century) before Hereford Rowing Club built their own, rather splendid, boathouse on the Wye:

Hereford Boathouse, with steps leading down to the Wye. Old Bridge in the distance.

Another view of the boathouse, far left. The steps (wide enough for an eight) are well shown here.
 Old Bridge again in the background.

As all VBCW researchers will know, the Hereford Boathouse is only a short distance away from Sully's Garage, the home of Lord de Braose's Wye Dredging Public Works Programme:

Old Bridge, with Sullys Garage (white building) on the left.

It was therefore only natural that, as Lord de Braose's dredging programme slowly made the Wye navigable for small gunboats, collectively known as the "Wye Flotilla", the Admiralty chose the Hereford Boathouse as their HQ building. Of course, when we say "small gunboats", sometimes the Wye could accept larger craft:

The Wye in flood, August 1912. Boathouse in the centre. The river's banks and the
rowing steps have completely disappeared beneath the immense flood waters
 - briefly capable of floating a battleship.

And as all VBCW researchers will also know (and be very anxious to tell you, often in excruciating detail), the Edwardian boathouse is one of Hereford's (mercifully few) "great architectural losses". In 1958, a new boathouse was built on the same site:

The Boathouse today (with the Wye flooding). A 1958 "box" structure with little embellishment.

The "glory days" of the Wye Flotilla during the VBCW have, of course, long gone - along with the Edwardian elegance of Flotilla HQ. Argument still rages as to whether this architectural loss was caused by civil war explosion, or post war municipal vandalism : stay tuned for future blogposts and, of course, the shocking but unvarnished truth.