Dennis Ivor Day
The Club History would not be complete without a look at one of our finest athletes, Dennis Ivor Day - his exploits were so famous, poems were written about him
Dennis Ivor Day, oarsman, of St Ives & Cambridge
By M Stephenson
George Newton Day (1832-1890), head of the dynasty of St Ives solicitors had his business in the Bullock Market, now the Broadway, where the present firm of Leeds, Day continues to operate. The family originally came to ST Ives from Leicester in the early decades of the century. His son, George Dennis Day (1860-1945) followed his father into the family firm, and a year after his father’s death the St Ives census for 1891 shows him with his wife, Margaret Jane, nee Davis (1862-1945) and a four month old son, George Lewis Day, in a house named “Rheola” with a parlour maid, cook and nurse. Their home, now a retirement home, was at the time of the census newly constructed in the fashionable red-brick style of the Arts & Crafts movement. The interior had been made more lavish by the transference of oak panelling from the previous family home in Leicester. Two more sons, Dennis Ivor and Miles Jeffery Game were born in 1892 and 1897 respectively, followed by a daughter.
Competitive rowing in the county had commenced in 1854 with the formation of Huntingdon Boat Club in a boathouse by the Huntingdon-Godmanchester river bridge; St Ives Rowing Club followed in about 1865. At that time there was a strict division in rowing races between the social classes of the professional/employer and the employed/artisans, for the former believed that those in manual jobs would have an unfair physical advantage, and to be beaten in a straight race would do nothing for their standing in the local community. Therefore, as at the St Ives club, training sessions would take place on weekday afternoons when the employers could mix with their friends and when their men and servants would be hard at work. The annual subscription of “at least 5/-“ would also prevent many wage earning townsmen from taking up the sport.
St Ives Rowing Club was started by Dr Grove and his friends, housing the heavily built clinker boats in a wooden boathouse in the barge-repairing yards alongside the railway bridge. It was here that in their school holidays from Sandroyd and Repton the two boys, Dennis Ivor and George Lewis Day first started their rowing careers, with Dennis Ivor stroking the town Junior “A” Four in 1909 and taking the bow seat in the Senior Four in1910 and 1911. The club races in that period usually took place as invitation events with Cambridge clubs and especially the annual needle-match with their local rivals, Huntingdon, along Houghton Wale, the long straight from Houghton Mill towards Huntingdon. As well as rowing, the club competed in water-polo, and these two activities were part of the annual regatta for many years, with other attractions such as the greasy pole and the best-decorated private boat. The day was a social highlight in the St Ives calendar and usually ended with a dance on the lawn of the Warren residence.
In 1912 the Day boys won several races together in Light Pairs, Double-Sculls and Senior Sculls, and with Denis Ivor in the bow seat and his brother stroking they competed in the Thames Rowing Club boat at Henley Regatta. After leaving Repton, Dennis Ivor went up to Cambridge University and to his father’s old college, St John’s. Their father had rowed when at school in Reading, but at university had turned to the new sport of cycling. He obtained his Blue in 1880, and in a race at the Crystal Palace he broke the world speed record over 13 miles; this was during a race to see if a man could cover 20 miles in an hour, but he crashed before the completion of the distance.
In 1837 Sir Patrick Colquhoun of St John’s College had instigated an annual sculling race to be competed for by the colleges within the University, and up to 1913 it had not been won by a sculler from his old college for more than thirty years. Then in that year, and in an exciting race with A Swann of Trinity Hall, Dennis Ivor was the victor, encouraging “W.H.” to pen a celebratory poem entitled “Sir Patrick’s Sculls”.
Sir Patrick’s Sculls
Sir Patrick sate in the College Hall,
Drinking the blue-red wine,
And quoth he “Have we never a man at all
That can win those sculls of mine?”
Sir Patrick sate at the table high,
(And a genial ghost was he),
And the rowing men passed under his eye
By one and two and three.
Sir Patrick up and he said his say,
And a straight spoke man was he.
“I hae chosen a lad by the name o’ Day
To win those sculls for me!”
They ha’e taken their boaties adown the stream,
They ha’e raced them up forbie;
And ther’s never a man got the better o’ Day
For as hard as they might try!
To all came Sir Patrick, as was his way
And he’s called for the blue-red wine;
And quoth he “I give you my good friend Day,
Who has won those sculls of mine!”
A longer second poem, entitled “The Sculler” was also written after Denis Ivor’s success and was first published in “The Cambridge Review”. Describing the race, over the long course which is still the distance for the Town Bumps and Winter League, it starts and finishes with the verse –
The hearts of an eight they hang on stroke,
And stroke draws life from his crew,
And so with the races by four and four,
And the races by two and two;
But the race that tests a man to the bone
Is the Sculler’s race that he rows alone.
He became Captain of the Lady Margaret Boat Club and Secretary of both the Cambridge University Boat Club and the Blues Committee.His rowing partnership with his brother continued at Cambridge and they won the Fairburn-Foster Paris, the Magdalene Pairs and the Lowe Double-Sculls together. The same year as his success in the Colquhoun Sculls Dennis Ivor stroked the winning Wyfold Fours at Henley Regatta and was in the successful Visitor’s Club crew in 1914. He also stroked the Leander eight which lost to Harvard University of the USA in the final of the Grand Challenge Cup, the most prestigious race at Henley. But his finest hour on the water was as the bow man in the successful Cambridge boat in the last University Boat Race before the event was suspended for the duration of the Great War.
As a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery Dennis Ivor was tragically shot through the eye by a German sniper at Vermelles, France, the bullet lodging in his skull. This was on 25th September 1915. His parents were called for and crossed the channel to Boulogne, but he did not regain consciousness and died of the injury on October 7th. He was 23 years old. His body was returned to St Ives and an impressive funeral was held on the lawn at “Rheola”. It was scheduled to start at 3.30 in the afternoon, but before that time three thousand people had assembled around the house. All shops in the town closed for an hour in respect for the young soldier. His body was carried from his father’s house over the road to the Pig Lane Cemetery. Decades later, his parents were interred with him beneath a tall granite cross. By the time of his death, the bow man in the defeated Oxford boat had also been killed, as had twelve other rowing Blues.
On hearing of his elder brother’s death, Miles Jeffrey Game Day composed a six-verse memorial poem entitled “To My Brother”, in which he reminisces on the dawning of a day on the Ouse which had played such an important part in his late brother’s life. It commences –
This will I do when we have peace again,
Peace and return to ease my heart of pain.
Crouched in the brittle reed beds wrapped in grey,
I’ll watch the dawning of the winter’s day.
When Miles Jeffery Game Day himself left school at Repton in 1915 he joined the Royal Navy and became a Flight Commander. On February 27th 1918, and two weeks after being awarded the D S C for distinguished action near Dunkirk, he was flying with another English plane over the North Sea when they were attached by six German aircraft. Miles engaged in battle with them and his aircraft burst into flames. Diving down he flattened his descent to land on the sea; but his plane was not a seaplane. Climbing onto the wing he waved to his fellow pilot before his plane sank beneath the waves. His body was never recovered. He was only 21 years old. A correspondent in “The Times” mentioned his love of poetry and how it had reflected his “joy of flying and homeliness of his Huntingdon fens and dykes. There is freshness and music in his poetry; it has some of the irresistible charm of his bright voice and ways”.
Dennis Ivor’s elder brother and partner in so many rowing victories, George Lewis, also fought in France and Belgium. He was wounded just before the Armistice, but recovered to take his place in the family business and local politics after the war. I conclude this article with a further poem written after Dennis Ivor’s death; it was originally published in “The Call”.
Ivor Day, Oarsman, St Ives and Cambridge
Did you know Day
With his winning way,
See him afloat
Manage a boat
In a breeze on the river?
Wasn’t he clever?
Couldn’t he row?
Three years ago
I was him at bow,
Straight as an arrow,
Swift as a swallow,
Leave Oxford to follow.
Dead! Do they say?
- Not Ivor Day –
“Killed by a shot” –
No! He is not.
Some German lie,
He couldn’t die.
Somewhere he lives still,
Still uses his skill,
Somewhere his spirit
Life must inherit,
Death has no hold
On men so bold,
Let us just say
He’s gone away,
Brave Ivor Day,
Gone away! Gone away!