A free display at Weybridge Library runs to 18 January and the 22 September talk is now sold out. Amy Gentry's club has sent 11 rowers to the Olympics.

A rowing club on the Weybridge towpath is 100 years old this year, and the free display marking it runs at Weybridge Library until Monday 18 January 2027.

The free talk that goes with it, at Walton Library on Tuesday 22 September, is sold out. Eventbrite showed no tickets left when we checked on Sunday 7 September, and Elmbridge Borough Council’s own announcement does not say so.

The club is Weybridge Ladies Amateur Rowing Club, founded in 1926 by Amy Gentry. It has kept an average membership of about 40 women. From that it has produced 11 Olympians who rowed for Great Britain between 1976 and 1988, the club says.

What is on show, and when you can see it

‘Making Waves’ is a display case at Weybridge Library Hub, Church Street, KT13 8DE. Elmbridge Museum put it in on 15 July and it stays until 18 January 2027, according to the museum’s own exhibition listing.

It holds personal artefacts, rowing kit, trophies and photographs from Amy Gentry’s life and career. There is no charge and no booking. You see it during library opening hours, which Surrey County Council gives for Weybridge as:

  • Tuesday to Saturday, 9.30am to 5pm
  • closed Sunday and Monday
  • Super Access members can enter 8am to 8pm on Sunday and Monday, and 8am to 9.30am and 5.15pm to 8pm the rest of the week, with no staff present

Read those two facts together and one date matters. The display’s last day is a Monday, when the library is shut to everyone except Super Access members. For most people the last chance to see it is Saturday 16 January 2027.

There is also a full online exhibition and a blog post, both free and both worth more than the display case if you cannot get to Weybridge.

The talk is full

The centenary talk is:

  • What: Making Waves, an illustrated talk by Elmbridge Museum on Amy Gentry
  • Where: Walton Library, 54 The Heart, off Hepworth Way, KT12 1GH
  • When: Tuesday 22 September, 10.30am to 11.30am
  • Cost: free, aimed at adults, arrive five minutes early
  • Status: sold out on Eventbrite as at 7 September

Surrey Libraries runs the booking. Its listing notes that anyone who does not want to hand over an email address and phone number online can book in person at the host library instead. That route may be worth trying if you want a returned ticket.

Who Amy Gentry was

She was born in Barnes on 26 July 1903 and reckoned her love of the river to the age of one month, when her parents took her out on the Thames.

Her competitive start was local. Weybridge Rowing Club put on a ladies’ fours race at its Victory Regatta in 1919 and coached 16 young women for it, Gentry among them. It went well enough that the club added a ladies’ section in 1920. By 1926 that section had outgrown the shared boathouse, so Gentry set up a club of its own on the towpath at Walton Lane. She was its captain from the start and later its chair, and she held that position until she died.

Then she went and won things:

  • the mixed double skiff championship with her brother, three years running from 1924 to 1926
  • regatta wins with Weybridge crews at Brussels in 1925 and Ostend in 1930
  • the British women’s single sculls championship in 1932, 1933 and 1934, retiring undefeated

Those are English Heritage’s figures, from the research behind the blue plaque it put up for her this year.

A century of Weybridge Ladies Amateur Rowing Club Timeline. 1919, ladies fours race at the Weybridge Victory Regatta, 16 women coached including Amy Gentry. 1920, ladies section added at Weybridge Rowing Club. 1926, Weybridge Ladies Amateur Rowing Club founded with its own boathouse. 1927, Weybridge beats Ace over the Mortlake to Putney course in a borrowed boat. 1932 to 1934, Amy Gentry British single sculls champion, retiring undefeated. 1969, Gentry appointed OBE for services to women's rowing. 1976, Gentry dies on 11 June; a Weybridge Ladies coxed four races at the Montreal Olympics, the first Games with women's rowing. 2026, centenary, plus an English Heritage blue plaque and a museum display. A century of Weybridge Ladies Amateur Rowing Club Dates as recorded by Elmbridge Museum, English Heritage and the Women's Eights Head of the River Race. 1919 Weybridge Rowing Club stages a ladies' fours race and coaches 16 women for it 1920 A ladies' section is added to the club 1926 Amy Gentry founds Weybridge Ladies ARC, with its own boathouse 1927 Weybridge beats Ace over the Mortlake to Putney course, in a borrowed boat 1932-34 Gentry is British single sculls champion three years running, then retires undefeated 1969 Gentry is appointed OBE for services to women's rowing 1976 Gentry dies on 11 June; a Weybridge four rows at the first Olympics open to women 2026 Centenary: a blue plaque, a museum display and 11 Olympians on the club's record Graphic by Elmbridge News
Every date here is sourced in the article.

The 1927 race, and a claim worth correcting

The club’s own centenary page describes the Women’s Eights Head of the River Race as an event “founded and first won by WLARC in 1927”. The race’s own history tells it slightly differently, and the difference is worth having right.

The Women’s Eights Head of the River Race records that the first women’s eights race over the Mortlake to Putney course was held in 1927, between Ace and Weybridge Ladies, with Amy Gentry in the Weybridge crew. Only two crews entered, so it was a side by side race rather than a head. Weybridge won it, in a boat borrowed from Thames Rowing Club.

The same two clubs raced again in 1928 with the same result. Alpha joined in 1929 and won. By 1930 there were five entries, so it became a processional event, and that is the year the race organisers date the Head from.

So Weybridge won the first women’s race over the course, twice. The Head as an institution came a little later. Both things are true, and the first one is the better story.

The bit that has nothing to do with rowing

Gentry earned her living as a secretary. Between 1941 and 1943 that meant working for Barnes Wallis at Vickers-Armstrong in Weybridge, on the bomb designed to bounce across water.

Elmbridge Museum’s blog records what she actually did there. Wallis catapulted wooden models across Silvermere Lake at Cobham. Gentry rowed out to fetch them back, and handled the boat while she did it. The museum quotes her:

Sit down Wallis! You’ll have us both in the water, and I’m in charge of this boat!

She also sang. She was a contralto and took a gold medal at the Richmond and Twickenham Music Festival in 1935 and again in 1938. In 1946 she and several fellow rowers set up an amateur dramatic society in Weybridge to keep members busy over the winter.

That society was the Desborough Players, and it is still going. It performs at the Cecil Hepworth Playhouse in Walton, the borough’s only theatre and the venue for both of this season’s pantomimes.

The plaque is not in Elmbridge

English Heritage put up a blue plaque for Amy Gentry in 2026. It reads “AMY GENTRY 1903-1976 Pioneer of women’s rowing lived here”, and it is at 29 Thornton Road, East Sheen, SW14 8NS, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. That is about ten miles downriver from the boathouse.

The address is the one she lived at through her championship years, until 1939. After that the family moved to a bungalow on Hamhaugh Island at Shepperton, which is in Spelthorne, and she stayed there for the rest of her life.

So the club is Elmbridge’s and the woman largely was not, which is worth saying plainly rather than quietly annexing her.

What the club has done this year

Its own centenary account lists:

  • an Ergothon in which members rowed more than 600 kilometres in 12 hours, raising over £10,000 with match funding from Sport England, earmarked for equipment and training
  • a centenary party attended by former members, neighbouring clubs and Elmbridge’s Deputy Mayor, Councillor Simon Leifer
  • another entry in the Women’s Eights Head of the River Race
  • a Learn to Row programme the club says is bringing in new members and former rowers

The money matters more than it sounds. A club of about 40 members buying racing boats is a different financial proposition from a club of 400.

What it means for you

If you want to see the display, go on a Tuesday to Saturday. It is free, it is in Weybridge Library on Church Street, and it is there until 18 January. The practical last day for most people is Saturday 16 January.

If you wanted the talk, you are too late to book online. Ask at Walton Library about returns or an in-person ticket. Surrey Libraries takes in-person bookings for people who do not want to give contact details online.

If you want to row, the club takes beginners. Its Learn to Row programme is open to women of all ages and the boathouse is on the Thames towpath at Walton Lane, Weybridge, KT13 8LU.

If you are just after the history, the online exhibition is the best of it and costs nothing. It reproduces the photographs, the trophies and Gentry’s own account of racing Dutch crews who rowed in long skirts tied up at the knee.

Driving to Weybridge Library means the Churchfield Road car park; our guide to parking in Elmbridge sets out which of the borough’s 28 car parks are free on a Sunday and which are not. For what else is on, see things to do in Elmbridge.

Sources