26 January 2024

By Tim Koch

Tim Koch passes on a request.

The official Oxford – Cambridge Boat Race website recently posted this appeal for information:

What’s an old gold mining town in NSW Australia got to do with the Boat Race? Well… we’re hoping you might be able to tell us!

Adrian, a detectorist from down under, recently contacted us with an unusual request; to help us identify anything we can about a belt buckle featuring two rowing eights and the words Oxford and Cambridge clearly marked at the top.

We asked Adrian a bit more about this discovery:

“Finding metal belt buckles is fairly common, I have quite a collection of metal shirt buttons as well. But the most common thing to find is … bullets and shotgun pellets.”

“During the Gold Rush era (1850s to 1890s) cricket was the national pastime. I often find cricket buckles near old gold mines. As most of the European miners observed the tradition of not working on a Sunday, after church they would often get dressed in their best clothes (including their gilded belt buckles) for a game of cricket.”

Finding cricket themed belt buckles is so common there’s even a book documenting all known variations, but there’s no reference to Boat Race themed buckles which is how Adrian came to contact us.

If anyone knows anything about this belt buckle and where it might have originated please get in touch with us and we’ll pass on any information to Adrian who is keen to learn more.

Tim adds: All I can say is that the inclusion of two anchors in the design suggests that it was not made by anyone connected with the sport of rowing! At least they did not make the oars canoe paddles as is often the case when non-rowers attempt a rowing theme.