IT is the premier rowing event at Durham Regatta and in 1910, it was won by a team from Bede College.

Arguably the most poignant memory of The Grand Challenge Cup, the crew from Bede (R Wheldon bow, RH Robson 2, JO Wilson 3, CE Walker stroke and AW Bramwell cox), won the cup by three-quarters of a length, but soon after, they would form part of the 8th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry that joined the British Forces in France, in April, 1915.

A company of eight Durham Light Infantry was known as the Bede Contingent, comprising more than 100 past and present students of the college. They were soon thrown into the front-line trenches on Gravenstafel Ridge during the second battle of Ypres.

The Bede spirit was not affected by their first experience of gunfire, with official regimental history records reading: “Through the darkness came the voice of some irrepressible Bede College member of A Company as a shell passed over, ‘Aye it reminds yer of Durham regatta. Now lads, up goes another!

All together! Bang! Mind the stick!’ “Then someone called ‘Who’s won the Grand?’ And there were rival cries of ‘City!’ and ‘Bede!”’ The Bede men went on to help save Ypres, but they suffered appalling losses with 17 killed, ten wounded, and 31 taken prisoner.

Of the Bede crew who won the Grand Challenge Cup in 1910, RH Robson was killed, R Wheldon lost an eye, and the cox AW Bramwell became a prisoner of war. Wheldon is in the photograph.

There was no Durham Regatta in 1915 because of the war.