Durham School Boat Club - Durham | UK Rowing Clubs | Row HQ

Durham School Boat Club rows on the River Wear from its own boathouse just downstream of Prebends Bridge. The boathouse was built in 1892, and the club's fleet ranges from single sculls to eights and octuples.

The school was a founding member of Durham Regatta in 1834, and its first recorded boat was the four-oared Argo in 1838. The formal club dates from 1847; it won its first Durham Regatta Challenge Cup in 1865, while W. King became its first former pupil to row in the Boat Race when he represented Oxford in 1854.

A recent development plan recorded more than 100 pupils rowing each week. It described 12 Games and PE lessons, 12 co-curricular sessions and a Saturday programme, with plans for a defined route from beginners to senior squads and continued scholarships and means-tested bursaries for talented athletes.

The club is open across school year groups and has also offered rowing to Chorister School pupils, parents and friends. Parents of Durham School Boat Club supports its development through fundraising.

Durham School has produced eight British championship crews, including the open junior coxless pair and a composite women's eight in 2010. That year its junior women's eight won silver for Great Britain at the Coupe de la Jeunesse and its first coxed four took National Schools' Regatta silver.

In 2024-25 the senior boys returned to the Schools' Head after four years, the club was named best-performing club at Ponteland Junior Head, and a pupil took England single-scull bronze at the Home International Beach Sprint Regatta. Durham Regatta remains the club's principal home event, and the school was one of its original organisers.