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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
The Stewards Enclosure is only open to members
and their guests who must buy a badge to enter.
There are 6500 members and a ten-year waiting list
to join. Just downstream of the Stewards Enclosure
is the Regatta Enclosure, which is open to members
of the public and where there is no dress code.
Tickets this year cost from £17.00 to £23.00 with a
10% group discount on the Wednesday, Thursday
and Friday. Mooring your boat at the official
Regatta Moorings at Fawley Meadow is an
altogether more costly affair at some £25.00 per foot
plus another £30 for a key to the loo but this is the
place to be in your Edwardian Gentlemen’s Launch
or with your mirror-varnished Slipper Launch!
Later in July Fawley Meadows hosts the annual
Thames Traditional Boat Rally – washed out by
the monsoons of 2012 and baked by the tropical
heat wave of 2013. Sitting between the Regatta and
the Trad Boat Rally each year is the week of Swan
Upping when the Royal Swan Uppers in the scarlet
livery of the Queen join the Swan Uppers of the
Vintners and Dyers Companies from the City of
London in traditional wooden Thames Skiffs
rounding up and marking mute swans and their
cygnets between Sunbury and Abingdon. The annual
count which dates back to the 12th century used to
be about the kitchen but today is about conservation
.
The bills of the adults are no longer notched to show
if they are not the Queen’s birds and now only the
cygnets are caught and ringed.
Grand Houses
Temple Island which marks the start of the Henley
Royal Regatta course takes its name from the folly
built on it in the 1770s as a fishing lodge for nearby
Fawley Court. Historians are not sure if the original
house was designed by Sir Christopher Wren before
being remodeled by James “the destroyer” Wyatt but
their reticence is not shared by the estate agents selling
it for Iranian heiress Aida Hersham who bought it in
2008 for £13 million. Interested? You can take a
virtual tour at
Another riverside grand estate, Harleyford Manor,
was the home of Sir William Clayton who fought at
Waterloo: he used to graze his warhorses in the field
known today as Chargers Paddock. Today this is the
upper crust of the Thames marinas and this months
cover picture. In addition to the marina and riverside
moorings there are cedar lodges in Chargers Paddocks
with 51-week occupancy available on 40 year leases
from £170,000 and even posher 3 bedroom chalets also
on 51-week occupancies but with 99 year leases from
£370,00. The occupancy limit means you don’t have to
pay Community Charge but the annual ground rents
and service charges run at about £5000 plus VAT.
All Saints Parish church at Bisham sits right on the
river bank, in very wet years the floods can reach the
pulpit. The Thames floods a fair bit over the winter.
On any cruise along the Upper Thames you’ll soon
notice how the houses are all raised up a bit. Now the