University rowing in the United Kingdom began when it was introduced to Oxford in the late 18th century.[1][2] The first known race at a university took place at Oxford in 1815 between Brasenose and Jesus and the first inter-university boat race, between Oxford and Cambridge, was rowed on 10 June 1829.[3][4]
Today, many universities have a rowing club and at some collegiate universities, Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, and London, each college has its own club as well as a main university club. In contrast to the Oxford/Cambridge/Durham colleges, London colleges are members of British Universities and Colleges Sport in their own right, and thus compete in inter-university competitions. In Scotland, the rowing clubs of Glasgow University and Edinburgh University initiated an annual race in 1877, making this competition the second oldest in the United Kingdom. Competitive university rowing in Northern Ireland began in the 1930s with the formation of Queen's University Belfast Boat Club in 1931, whose first inter-varsity races were a triangular tournament against Glasgow University and University College Dublin in 1934–35 and who entered the Wylie Cup (which had been running between Irish universities since 1922) from 1937 to 1938.[5][6] The Welsh Boat Race began in 2006.
A 2016 article identified six university clubs which "dominate rowing among higher education institutions": Oxford Brookes, Imperial College, London, Newcastle, Durham and Reading. With the exception of Reading, these are all designated by British Rowing as High Performance Programmes, a scheme that also involves Edinburgh as well as three non-university clubs. In more recent times Bristol has placed itself amongst the UK's leading programmes. In the UK the 'Championship' Programmes are: Brookes, Bristol, Durham, Edinburgh, Imperial, Newcastle and UL(London).[7][8]
Of the precise date when boating became a common amusement in the University we have no record, but we find T. F. Dibden, who came up in 1793, and took his degree in 1801...
...a history of Oxford rowing from its earliest days, even before the actual racing began—his first extracts relate to the year 1793...
Everyone knows that the first race took place at Henley in 1829, but no one has yet been to decide how it was that the idea of a between the two Universities arose.