Oct 21, 2025HTBS

Young Bill and Old Bill Remembered

Bill Colley, the last British builder of wooden “tortured ply” racing boats, whose death and funeral HTBS recently reported, at work on a restoration project in 2016.

21 October 2025

By Tim Koch

Tim Koch on a father and son whose lives were dominated by boats and the River Thames.

HTBS has often decried the increasing lack of good (or indeed any) rowing related writing in the mainstream media, both print and digital. Print media is slowly dying and one of its ways that sports reporting seems to be attempting to fight this demise is to concentrate only on the most popular athletic contests, particularly soccer in the case of Britain. Rowing, a minority sport that some see as elitist, is a particular victim of this mindset.

It was a very pleasant surprise therefore to see an obscure rowing related story given prominence in a very well written piece in the Times newspaper, both print and digital, with the publication of the obituary of Bill Colley. 

Bill’s obituary in the Times of 15 October (click to enlarge). There will also be a piece on Bill in an upcoming edition of the BBC Radio 4 obituary programme, Last Word.

For those of us who were rowing in West London 40 years ago however, William John Colley (1937 – 2025) will always be “Young Bill”, a sobriquet to differentiate him from his father, William Charles Colley (1902 – 1986), “Old Bill”, a waterman and lighterman for sixty years, the son and the grandson of watermen.

When I started at Hammersmith’s Auriol Kensington RC on Lower Mall in the mid-1980s, Old Bill lived in one of the nearby semi-detached early 17th Century cottages and was a frequent visitor to AK where he was delightful and gentle company. I remember him telling of a Zeppelin raid on London that he witnessed from the river during the First World War. 

Lower Mall today. Old Bill lived at number 11, his sister-in-law at number 12. Number 13 is the Blue Anchor pub of 1722 and 14 is Auriol Kensington’s boathouse which was built on the site of two very old cottages in 1872.

Young Bill was born at 11 Lower Mall which, despite its Grade II historic listing, he remembered as “very cold”. Today, the humble fisherman’s or waterman’s cottage is worth well over a million pounds and is, no doubt, much warmer.

Old Bill spent most of his life at 11 Lower Mall though he was born at 40 Lower Mall, then part of a notorious slum, industrial area and boatyard known as Little Wapping. It was based around Hammersmith Creek, shown here c.1900. The area was razed and the creek covered over in 1936.

The Auriol Kensington archive has several items related to Old Bill, most notably two biographical pieces from local newspapers (when such publications existed and printed well-written stories and features of local interest).

1976 – Old Bill at 74. 
1985 – Old Bill at 83.
A certificate from the Royal Humane Society recognising one of the three people that Bill saved from drowning over the years.
In 1982, Bill’s services to rowing were recognised by an Amateur Rowing Association Centenary Medal. He served as the local representative on ARA Division 18, the area covering Hammersmith, from its foundation in 1960.

Other biographical details about Old Bill are that in his youth, he rowed for Parkside RC, a working man’s club based at Hammersmith’s West End Boathouse. He remained active on the club’s administration side until it was wound up in 1964. 

After he finished his waterman’s apprenticeship, Bill was one of seven entries for six places in the 1925 Doggett’s Coat and Badge but, after trail races at Hammersmith, he was the one who was eliminated.

Over fifty years, Bill raised thousands of pounds for the West London Hospital as the appeals secretary of the Hammersmith Borough Regatta.

William Charles “Old Bill” Colley pictured when Auriol Kensington RC named a boat after him in the mid-1980s. It was a small reward for a lifetime of service to the Thames and to rowing. Like father, like son.

One comment

  1. Seeing this is very nostalgic and I did see the obituary in the Times.
    I was born and grew up in Hammersmith very close to the River. In about 1958 I joined Parkside Rowing Club out of the West End Boathouse. They trained me to be a coxswain and I think around that time Bill was in the first eight in a boat (I don’t know if he built it) named Eight to the Bar. Around that time they came 50th in the Head. The attached was the Parkside 2nd eight in the 1960 Head taken from Hammersmith Bridge. I was the coxswain and that was an old clinker built boat; it was hard to get going but heavy to both lift and steer.

    I was around, alas, when Parkside ceased to exist and West End was demolished. I also rowed out of West End when I was at Latymer Upper School before they built their own boathouse just up river in 1965.

    During my frequent return trips to London I often walk along the Mall from the Black Lion to Hammersmith Bridge. A lot has changed but the part from the Rutland past Auriol and the Blue Anchor has remained much the same. As I say I’m very nostalgic and a reminder of the great history of that section of the Tideway.

    Much enjoy your many interesting Hear The Boat Sing articles, including the one about the Sims boatbuilding in the loft behind the Rutland and across Mall Road from the West End Boat house, where Eight to the Bar was built.

    David Godfrey
    3361 Caminito Luna Nueva
    Del Mar, CA 92014, USA

    (HTBS has my contact information)

    Reply

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