Club History
St Benet's Hall was founded in 1897 as a place for Benedictine monks to study within the University of Oxford.
In the Hall's early years crews were put together and did compete in University competitions however it was not until much later that a proper boat club was created. During the 1970s there still was no proper Boat Blub. A Boat from Trinity College was borrowed and the Hall entered teams into University competitions without much success.
In 1981, Wade Newmark, with the blessing of the new master Father Alberic Stacpoole, gathered together sufficient funds to create a proper boat club and to buy a boat, a beautiful Italian Donaratico with a wooden shell, from his old school, Radley College. A new set of blades was also bought for the crew.
From 1982 the Club started to climb the league tables with 1 bump in Torpids and 2 bumps in Eights.
The boat club disappeared in the late 80s and was resurrected in October 1992 by a monk from Ampleforth, William Wright who was studying at St Benet's at the time. He, with the help of Fr Henry, the Master, purchased a second hand boat called 'VICTORY' William managed to get 6 St Benet's students to row so was looking for two more so an American from Blackfriars and Pete Selwood, the current coach, were the extra crew members he recruited. A young lady that one of the crew knew coxed. Being a new club they had to 'row on' in both Torpids and Eights and did well moving up several places.
In 1993 William returned to Ampleforth and so Pete Selwood took over coaching as well as rowing in the boat. From 1997 Pete stopped rowing in the boat and has only coached.
In 1992 the Club had rack space in OUBC boathouse and were there until it was burnt down in September 1999. The new boat survived the fire as it had been moved out just beforehand to be repaired. The Club used Christ Church boathouse for the next 3 years then moved to St Hilda's boathouse where in July 2005. Both the Club's boats, one being only a few months old, were lost in the arson attack on the boathouse. In 2008 the Club started racking down on Donnington bridge in the Falcon boat club.
The club overall has done well moving up into division 4 in both Torpids and Eights and gaining several 'blades' in both races on the way. There have been some very good years and some not so good! But generally speaking St Benet's have done well when you consider our size and lack of fresher's coming up to Oxford have rowed before arriving. Pete thinks we have had only 4 students who had been in a boat before arriving. In 2005, Pete thinks we had the best record of all the colleges of moving up the most places over the past 10 years, unfortunately the following year we had a bad time and went down again.