Gilbert Johnstone Boathouse, Eton Mission Rowing Club, 127 Wallis Road, E9

This small boathouse, presented to the Eton Mission Rowing Club in 1934, by their president Gilbert Johnstone, is a rare survival of a domestic scale building in an industrial landscape. The boathouse is located at the end of Wallis Road and fronts directly onto the Lea Navigation Canal. It is two storeys and is constructed from red brick. It has a pitched roof with painted white quoins and banding between the ground and first floor and original metal windows. The Eton Mission Rowing Club was established, in 1885, by a group of Old Etonians. Originally the rowers used ‘to get boated’ from under Wick Bridge and stored the boats at the St Mary of Eton Church. The first boathouse was built on the Hackney Marsh side of the Cut and opened in May 1911. The first Gilbert Johnstone boathouse was built on the Hackney Marsh side of the Hackney Cut and opened in May 1911 before being relocated to the other side of the Cut. A stone plaque hangs above the main double door with the inscription AD 1934 GILBERT JOHNSTONE BOAT HOUSE E.M.R.C PRESENTED TO ETON MISSION ROWING CLUB BY THEIR PRESIDENT HONBLE GILBERT JOHNSTONE IN MEMORY OF HIS ETONIAN WET-BOB BROTHERS FRANCIS LORD DERWENT HONBLE CECILE AND HONBLE SIR ALAN JOHNSTONE’. The great veteran of First World War, Henry Allingham, who became, for one month, the oldest living man in the world in 2009, by reaching the age of 113, was born in London on the 6th June 1896, the year that the first modern Olympic Games took place in Athens. In 2008, Allingham was the guest of honour at the Eton Mission Rowing Club, his former rowing club. Returning to the canal-based club, Henry declared, ‘It’s wonderful – it’s taken about ten years off my life!’ Introduced to rowing by his mother’s youngest brother, Charlie Foster, Henry became a regular fixture on the water at Eton Mission from 1909-1914 and then from 1919-1922. Only the First World War got in the way of his rowing. Allingham survived the Battle of Jutland, the Somme and Ypres.

Interwar (1914-1938)

boathouse

This diminutive boathouse is a rare survival of a domestic scale building in an industrial landscape. It is also one of the last remaining buildings associated with Eton College and its Mission for the poor. The boathouse is also one of the few surviving buildings that explains the history of amateur rowing in East London as well as the area’s illustrious sporting heritage.