The former 1880s boathouse, located within a flood plain on the bank of the River Thames in Wallingford, was destroyed by fire in 1999. Peter Dann were the Structural engineers for the new training facility which was short-listed by the Royal Institute of British Architects for the RIBA Leisure Awards.
This facility boasts a ‘dry boathouse’ for the squad’s fleet, a wet store, changing rooms and a link building to offices and two club rooms. The building was designed to allow flooding of the ground floor during elevated river levels of up to the predicted 1:100 year flood height in order to ensure zero impact of the new construction.
A swing bridge along the route of the Thames Path allows access of boats from the river into the wet boathouse, which was founded on steel sheet piles with a reinforced concrete capping beam.
