Downstream

became a holiday destination
where wealthy city folk
moored their weekend
houseboats. The town was
only an hour’s journey from
Paddington and in the
summer there were daily trips
to Henley by train for a
guinea. But it was the royal
regatta, ‘the most important
gathering of amateur oarsmen
in England’, according to
Dickens’s Dictionary of the
Thames, that made the town