Old Combined Boathouse
The first combined college boathouse in Cambridge, a Grade II listed building of 1958 on the River Cam.
The Old Combined Boathouse stands on the River Cam and is Grade II listed. Built in 1958, it was the first boathouse in Cambridge shared by several colleges, and four colleges' boat clubs share it: Wolfson, Corpus Christi, Girton and Sidney Sussex. The word "Old" separates it from the New Combined Boathouse, further downstream, whose current building was finished in 2016.
What it is like
This is a no-frills building. It has no ergometer room and no room for displaying trophies or blades, and the official list entry calls the first-floor changing rooms "spartan". In the 1980s the ground floor gained a pair of wings, partly to house Wolfson's boats. Between the concertina doors on the outside, the colleges' coats of arms are on show, as at many Cambridge boathouses.
Seeing it
It is a working club building, so treat it as a place to look at from the towpath, not to walk into. Four flagpoles carry the boat clubs' flags during Lent and May Bumps. Along the river its neighbours are the Trinity Hall boathouse upstream and the Newnham one downstream, and the Cambridge University Boat Club's listed Goldie Boathouse is nearby.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
