How punting came to Cambridge

A London habit first

According to a 2025 Museum of Cambridge article, pleasure punts were on the non-tidal Thames by about 1860. It offers Marcus Stone's painting A Pleasant Spot on the Thames, of 1863, as evidence, complete with family dog. So Cambridge took up the idea some 40 years later.

Did punts come from cargo boats?

The same article argues that punts take their flat bottom and width from lighters, the small boats that brought goods upriver from ports. On a shallow river like the Cam the logic is easy to see. The lighters looked different, though, with pointed ends. You can check this on a 19th-century painting of the Mill Pond, the King's and Bishop's Mill, held at Cambridge Central Library, and on a Le Keux engraving of the 1840s.

We would call the family resemblance plausible and not proved, because the article cites no sources. Flat-bottomed boats are also an obvious answer to shallow water, so shared shape needn't mean direct descent.

When did it start? Four answers

• Around 1900: the Museum of Cambridge's general date.
• 1902 to 1904: a Capturing Cambridge note on a photograph of Fisher's Lane, taken about 1905, which it says shows an early punt.
• 1903: the Museum of Cambridge says Maurice "Jack" Scudamore built his first punt at a Chesterton boatyard that year.
• About 1906: a newspaper of 19 October 1907 says that a year earlier a punt was hard to find, and that before then such a thing was unknown in Cambridge.

These aren't quite as far apart as they look. A few builders may have been trying punts by 1903 while most people had never seen one. Newspapers also exaggerate novelty. Either way, the change was quick. That same 1907 report says every boatyard now had a flotilla of them, all in great demand.

The early trade

The name that recurs is Scudamore. The company's own account dates its founding to 1910, and Capturing Cambridge agrees on "around 1910". Local records fill in some detail. Maurice Scudamore is registered at 15a Mill Lane from 1908 to 1915, and the 1913 directory lists J. Scudamore there as boat builder and punt proprietor. A 1908 case involved an Arthur, apparently of the same family, charged with obstructing the river by building a launch at the Mill Lane access point, beside a moored punt.

He was never the only one. The 1907 report says "every boatyard" had punts, and Scudamore's is described by Capturing Cambridge as one of the early hirers, not the first. Today nine companies appear on the Conservators' licensed list.

Barges out, punts in

The Museum of Cambridge suggests leisure punting grew only once the river was clear of cargo. The timing mostly works. River trade had collapsed after 1845, with tolls at £99 by 1898. But it wasn't quite clear. Commercial barges carried on past the First World War in small numbers, so early punters may sometimes have shared the water with them, at least on the lower river.

A map of 1910 marks "Boats" just below Magdalene Bridge, though it doesn't say what kind. Quayside's own move into punting is harder to date, and we haven't found a reliable first year for it. Boatyards stayed on the quay into the 1960s, as the directories show.

Further reading

For practical matters, see how to punt and the College Backs route.

Sources

• Museum of Cambridge, A History of Punting in Cambridge, 2025. Used for the Thames origins, lighters, the two artworks and the 1903 date.
• Capturing Cambridge (Museum of Cambridge), Fisher's Lane, 17 Mill Lane and 39 Owlstone Road. Used for the 1902 to 1904 date, the 1907 newspaper report, the 1908 case and the Mill Lane records.
• Wikipedia, River Cam, drawing on Boyes and Russell, The Canals of Eastern England (1977). Used for the last barges and toll figures.

Sources checked October 2026. We have seen the 1907 report only as quoted by Capturing Cambridge.