OBITUARIES
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Colin Dominy
23rd January 2026
Colin Dominy, 1936 – 2026
Earlier this month, Lynne Dominy wrote to the club to inform us that her uncle, Colin Dominy, had passed away on 3rd January. He was just weeks short of his 90th birthday.
Colin joined Cygnet in 1954 at the tender age of 17 having just come to London to take up employment as a civil servant with the Air Ministry. On his application form, which we still have, in answer to the question ‘Previous Rowing Club’ he proudly wrote NONE. Yet he took to the Thames like a fish to water and would become one of the most experienced and sought after coxswains on the Tideway.
Colin counted the likes of Mike Arnold-Gillat, Barney Frith, Derek Bush, John Ellis, Len Hoskins, Len Huggett and Peter Roche among his contemporaries. They were the club stalwarts of their day who would pass the Cygnet ethos on to new members. One way or another, they would all leave their mark on the club and Colin was no exception. Indeed, flicking through the index of C H Genever Watling’s write up of the club history from 1950-76, no member receives more mentions than Colin Dominy.
Two members – Norman Cowling and Lawrence McVeigh – were kind enough to share their extensive memories of Colin with me. Both recall an individual who may have been short of stature but was utterly dedicated in everything he did whether it be coxing, rowing or cross-country running. Norman opined that he was literally a light weight, but in every other way a heavy weight with a determination to win. Lawrence concurred: he was an excellent cox and could be fairly aggressive in a race, particularly if he felt he could get one over on an opposing crew.
Colin first rose to prominence in the second half of the 1950s when Cygnet was enjoying something of a resurgence following a lean patch during the early post war years. Thus, in 1956, a ‘junior’/’junior-senior’ Vlll won a string of victories with Colin at the helm. Further victories would follow, many captured in the club’s photo archives with Colin invariably sat centre stage. By the end of the fifties, Cygnet could look back on its most successful period since the thirties: the club had undoubtedly won more events in the junior and junior senior Vllls class than ever before and Colin had had a hand in most of them, variously coxing and coaching.
The 1960s were nowhere near as successful as the previous decade. With competitive Cygnet crews few and far between, in 1965 Colin accepted an invitation to cox Nautilus, the forerunner of the National Squad, coached by George Plumtree, rowing out of Twickenham RC. Lawrence recollects: Colin’s first contribution was coxing a brand-new Stampfli lV+ doing a piece in the cut inside Eel Pie Island when a boat appeared unexpectedly and took the bows off completely. He was embarrassed but they didn’t throw him out. Nautilus had its moments, winning The Golden Oar in Antwerp among other international events, but it never fully lived up to expectations and by the late 1960s Colin was back in the Cygnet fold, becoming club captain in 1968-69.
Rowing was never the be-all and end-all for Colin; he was also a very fast runner. In an era when running was a central feature of winter training, he regularly led the pack on Tuesday and Thursday evening laps round the bridges or through Richmond Park. An indispensable team participant in the Oarsmen’s Cross Country organized by Black Heath Harriers, he usually led the Cygnet contingent home, not least in 1969 when Cygnet won the event outright.
No obituary of Colin would be complete without mention of his wife Isobel pictured here at a Cygnet dinner dance in the 1960s. Lawrence claims a small part in this union: I invited Isobel and some other young women I knew through work down to a Cygnet party and the Civil Service Boathouse worked its usual magic. ‘Issy’ took up rowing at St George’s, who also rowed out of the CSBH at this time, and they were married in 1967. As Norman notes, together they were a formidable rowing couple in the boathouse.
By the time I joined Cygnet in the early 1970s, being piloted by Colin was a rite of passage for any self-respecting crew and they all trusted him implicitly. Yet, like every cox, Colin yearned to row. And so it was, in 1974-75, that Colin joined myself, my brother Andy and Steve Reeves in a novice lV that would win the non-status John Cork Cup before securing the ‘real thing’ at Barnes & Mortlake regatta. Norman recalls: I remember the pleasure everyone took when he won novice fours. The trophy was huge and we refilled it many times.
Being a lightweight could have its drawbacks. Thus, on one occasion, while rowing bow in an Vlll he caught a humongous crab which lifted him out of his seat and catapulted him the length of the Vlll. As he sailed over our heads, the rest of us reflected that there must be easier ways to conduct seat trials. Yet, true to form, Colin took it all in his stride and simply added the episode to his rich tapestry of a life afloat.
Colin would remain in evidence at Cygnet until the 1980s when the Civil Service Boathouse Executive asked St George’s to look for new premises. They settled on Twickenham RC and Colin and ‘Issy’ duly relocated with them before upping sticks again to Caversham where he joined Reading RC for a time. In later years, he took up golf, playing regularly with local friends.
Colin and ‘Issy’ were both early supporters of Henley Women’s Regatta and contributed financially to its success. He also attended the Cygnet Veteran’s Lunch at Leander, happily conversing with ‘old hands’ over a beer or two, but never staying to dine. After ‘Issy’ died he moved into sheltered accommodation in Reading for a time, while continuing to play golf. His twilight years were spent in Tisbury in Wiltshire, his birthplace, where he moved to be nearer to his family.
Coxswains come and go, but few display the longevity, commitment and sheer skill that Colin Dominy did. He was one of a kind and Cygnet was lucky to have him. His funeral will be held on Thursday 29th January at 2pm at Salisbury Crematorium, Barrington Road, Salisbury SP1 3JB.
Paul Rawkins, 23rd January 2026 (with thanks to Lawrence McVeigh and Norman Cowling)
John Ellis
26th September 2025
John Ellis, 1933 – 2025
Not everybody craves the limelight; some like John Ellis, who died on the evening of 8th September aged 92, are destined to play a support role, and so it was that John often appeared alongside his wife Dame Diana Ellis, chair of British Rowing, at countless official events throughout her long term of office.
Although Cygnet was the main civil service rowing club post war, there were others, among them Crescent, another post office club based on the River Lee. Throughout the 1950s and 60s Crescent would often field crews for the annual civil service regatta, frequently walking away with the silver. For some Crescent members like John Ellis and Len Huggett, the draw of the Tideway was hard to resist and both would defect to Cygnet in the late 1950s.
John may not have been a noisy individual but, as Lawrence McVeigh remembers, he was a successful Cygnet stroke, noted for his long, graceful smooth technique. Thus, the early 1960s found John rowing in several club eights at a host of Tideway regattas and the Serpentine. In due course, John met Di, a fellow stroke, rowing for St George’s, who also boated from the civil service boathouse (and stroked the GB Women’s Vlll at the European Championships in 1966) and another successful matrimonial union was struck.
John, probably wisely, never quite succumbed to the Last of the Summer Wine set, which met at the boathouse on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, John and Len Huggett remained lifelong pals, often meeting up during retirement, Len ever full of bonhomie and John always on hand to see him safely home. It was a tried and tested combination. On those rare occasions when John put his head above the parapet, so to speak, it was usually at the annual president’s lunch at Henley or the veterans lunch at Leander, both of which provided the few picture opportunities that we have of John.
Di passed away in 2017 and John spent his last few years in a care home in Sussex. He is survived by a daughter, Claire and grandchildren Dan & Joe. The funeral will be held at 12.00 on 10th October at Wealden Crematorium, Horam Road, Horam, East Sussex TN21 0FX.
Paul Rawkins, 25th September 2025
Richard du Parcq
4th September 2025
Dr Richard du Parcq, 1943–2025
George Bernard Shaw memorably wrote I’m sorry this letter is so long. I didn’t have time to write a short one. Richard du Parcq, du P to his friends, who died on 25 August at the age of 82, took this famous utterance to new heights or perhaps lengths. He was completely incapable of writing a short email, still less mastering an answerphone. Zoom presented a whole new set of challenges, while firewalls, malware and the like simply defied comprehension.
Richard first encountered email in 1994; thousands of electronic missives would follow, each imprinted with his own unique turn of phrase, always running to many paragraphs, often tangential to the topic in hand. Thankfully, I rarely deleted them; they form a rich tapestry of his life, not to mention an invaluable aide memoire to writing this obituary.
About a month before he died, Richard wrote to the secretary at Cygnet informing him that he would be unable to attend the forthcoming ordinary general meeting. Typically, he went into further detail, describing himself as a well-disposed old fart, living just across the river, active 1968-1990s, who now has a mystery set of medical symptoms which has been puzzling Kingston Hospital once or twice a week in recent months. His symptoms would defy diagnosis until very late in the day, yet he had nothing but praise for the fifty-something professionals from every corner of the globe who had ministered to him, reflecting that just now, I find it hard to argue against immigration.
As it happened, the date of the OGM – 23 July – was a poignant one, coming just a week after Richard’s 56th anniversary as a member of Cygnet. His application form, dated 16 July 1969, informed the membership secretary that his full name was Richard Poole du Parcq, living in a basement on Kennington Road SE11, while gainfully employed in the Management Services Department of the Metropolitan Police, where he would remain for the whole of his working life. He listed his previous rowing club as Exeter College, Oxford.
Richard was born in 1943 in Godalming, Surrey, the eldest child of John and Ann du Parcq. Growing up in an academic household, he seems to have been a studious child who steered well clear of most sport, especially rugby while at Cheltenham College. In 1961, he went up to Oxford, where he would spend the next seven years studying his mother’s subject (chemistry) at his father’s college (Exeter), emerging with a PhD in 1968. Yet his formidable intellect betrayed an enduring love for English and History.
Life at Oxford had many compensations. It was here that he developed his passion for rowing, while making lifelong friends of Phil Beckett and Neil Jackson (also Cygnet members), among others, as well as starring in a notorious episode of University Challenge with Stanley Johnson, inviting a strong rebuke from quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne for unscholarly behaviour towards the opposing team.
Richard was never under any illusion that he would make the blue boat. In his own words: my rowing owed more to enthusiasm, and great love of the sport, than to physique or any innate ability. Nevertheless, 1962 found him rowing in the college’s second VIII; by 1963 he had graduated to the first VIII, stroked by Phil Beckett, rowing in open competition at Reading and Marlow. Longer acts of endurance followed in the Boston Marathon in 1964 and ’66. In those days, it was customary to preseason at Leander, where he recalled sharing a shower with Jack Beresford of 1936 Olympic gold medal fame. Their paths would cross again in the Tommy Steele movie ‘Half a Sixpence’, when Richard played a bankside extra at Henley and Beresford an umpire.
Richard joined Cygnet – the best rowing club in the world – a time when it was starting to draw away from its post office roots, attracting a new wave of graduates. Among them was Normal Cowling who recalled: he (Richard) was the spare man for the 1972 Thames Cup VIII, a difficult role that he carried out with good grace and humour. After Henley he came back into the eight and was a key man in picking up some consolation pots (to add to his coveted novice IVs win at Worcester earlier in the year). Further consolation followed with a star appearance in an advertising feature afloat for Double Diamond; said to work wonders, it was no match for Richard’s lethal homemade wines.
Older hands at Cygnet are fond of quipping that Cygnet is a marriage bureau masquerading as a rowing club. Richard rarely let his work interfere with life outside the office and he was unaware of a colleague, Diane Clark, who worked at Scotland Yard concurrently. Yet fate was already on the case: Diane rowed at Chiswick for the Civil Service Ladies Rowing Club and their paths would duly cross in the bar après rowing. They married in 1973 after a stag night that appeared to go on for days (when it was not fashionable), setting up home in Barnes and begetting five children (and six grandchildren) during 52 years of marriage.
None of the children shared their parents’ love of rowing, but they all have fond memories of terrorising the club on a Sunday morning while awaiting their parents’ return from their respective outings. Yet all appreciate the overarching role rowing played in their father’s life. Phoebe du Parcq opines: The rowing club encapsulated so much of what was important to dad – a community that welcomed everyone and built on a shared set of values.
What Richard may have lacked in physical attributes on the water, he more than made up for on land, serving as captain twice (1979, 1989–90), along with long stints as secretary, treasurer and committee member, interspersed with coaching, coxing and even gym instruction. His enduring legacy will be the Ten-Year Boat Buying Programme which he devised in 1979. This would transform the club’s fleet from what we jokingly used to refer to as firewood into one of the best stocked boat clubs on the Tideway, one of which was named after him. A Civil Service Merit Award would follow in the 2000s for long service to sport and recreation in the public sector.
He will be remembered, too, for his high-brow coxing commands such as four, I fear you are the architect of your own misfortunes, which often drew a blank from the hapless recipient, but a wry smile from the rest of the crew. A Tideway Scullers veteran VIII who he coxed a few times, regarded him as the most entertaining coxswain on the Tideway and he was much in demand for the annual Speaker’s Summer Regatta between Lambeth and Westminster Bridges. Wistfully recollecting the 1986 event, he noted: The racing was rubbish, but I did see ex-prime minister James Callaghan falling in and there was plenty of freebie drinking afterwards on parliament’s terrace.
Richard’s talents were not confined to Cygnet. He also spent 35 years ‘before the flag’ as a licensed umpire before I lost my rag with the National Competition Committee. In one sense, the role of umpire suited him perfectly – he knew the rule book inside out; however, the practical side sometimes proved more of a challenge – he once started an VIIIs race that overtook the previous race causing some consternation at the finish. Still, such occurrences were mere hiccups along the way and in 2022 British Rowing presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to the sport. Receiving it, Richard mused this may represent respectability ... something I haven’t always craved.
Be that as it may, the award also recognised the 18 years (2005-22) he had devoted as Entries Secretary of the Fours Head. Entries for this event always far exceed the number of spaces available resulting in endless instances of ‘special pleading’ night and day as the closing date approaches. The du Parcq household fielded these resolutely, knowing that such pleas were futile. As fellow Fours Head committee member Helen Smalman-Smith remembers, Richard was always firm and never unfair, showing inexhaustible patience in gently enlightening the confused. Entries-related correspondence has been much duller since he retired and certainly includes less Latin.
Richard’s life was not defined solely by rowing. Family life absorbed much of his time, and he would often regale us with their antics. Phoebe recalls that driving holidays and camping were the mainstay of du Parcq summers, but because of his pathological fear of motorways they always went the scenic route. Yet Richard was game for most things: Phil Beckett related how he ran 24 road marathons, including one in New York and another where he visited every public lavatory in south London due to an untimely upset stomach. In 2013 he joined others in a valiant attempt to scale Kilimanjaro for charity. At a more mundane level, he was always on hand for club bungalow working parties: he may have displayed no obvious DIY skills, but his stream of anecdotes was priceless.
Richard never missed a funeral if he could help it, travelling the length and breadth of the country in his stripy club blazer to bid a last farewell to the great and good of Cygnet and BBLRC. At Ann Southey’s funeral last year, he set a new trend appearing in his carpet slippers, which had escaped Di’s attention before they set off. His own funeral promises to be a tightly choereographed affair, right down to the last hymn. It will take place at St Mary’s, Barnes, a church Richard regularly attended – unless the hymns weren’t up to scratch – and one where he fulfilled the role of treasurer on the Parochial Church Council for some years.
Finally, as club historian I have written countless obituaries over the last decade. Each and every one of those benefitted from Richard’s meticulous proof reading and pearls of wisdom. It is doubtful whether this one would pass muster; hopefully, readers will excuse stray Oxford commas here and there.
Paul Rawkins, 2 September 2025
You are warmly invited to join us in remembering and celebrating the life of Richard du Parcq on Friday 19th September 2025 at 3:00 PM at St Mary’s Church, Barnes. Following the service, a private committal will take place at the crematorium for family and close friends. All are welcome to gather for refreshments and remembrance from 4:00 PM at The Coach and Horses on Barnes High Street.
Please feel free to wear something that reflects your relationship with Richard, for example club blazer or college tie. No flowers, please. Donations, if desired, may be made to The Amyloidosis Research Fund at The Royal Free Charity in memory of Richard du Parcq. Your presence and support are greatly appreciated.
