History

The club was the idea Jack Boy­dle after his son decided he wanted to learn gym­nas­tics but couldn’t find a club in Daco­rum to join. Classes started in 1973 at Ash­lyns in the school gym­na­sium with just a few mats as the only equip­ment, but were eagerly attended by local chil­dren. The offi­cial open­ing was inau­gu­rated by the Senior National Coach of the time and for­mer British Cham­pion, Nick Stu­art MBE. As the club grew, so more equip­ment was acquired until a full set of Men’s and Women’s appa­ra­tus was attained. In Feb­ru­ary 1975 (only 2 years after the clubs incep­tion) Geof­frey Tucker won a gold medal at the east­ern Coun­ties Novices U13 com­pe­ti­tion, the first of many to be won by Berkham­sted gym­nasts in the com­ing years.

As the club expanded, new classes were added at other venues includ­ing Daco­rum Sports Cen­tre and both Hemel Hemp­stead and Cavendish Schools, try­ing to reach as many chil­dren as pos­si­ble. We made strong links with gym­nas­tics clubs in our twin towns of Neu-Isenburg (near Frank­furt, Ger­many) and Oak Har­bour (in Seat­tle, USA) with sev­eral trips and com­pe­ti­tions tak­ing place between the clubs over the next few decades.

Even­tu­ally in 1989 after many years of plan­ning, we man­aged to find enough money through our sav­ings and a (very) small grant from the Sports Coun­cil to con­vert Ash­lyns School’s old coal cel­lar into a per­ma­nently fit­ted gym­nas­tics facil­ity (sav­ing an enor­mous amount of time and effort in not hav­ing to erect and dis­man­tle the appa­ra­tus every ses­sion). This meant we had to amal­ga­mate the two sides of the club, the classes of Hemel and Berkham­sted, into one. But in Jan­u­ary 1990 the club moved into its new premises ready to take on the 90’s. A few years later we man­aged to increase our train­ing space by roof­ing over the neigh­bour­ing court yard to use as a warm up room, with indoor toi­let and bal­let facil­i­ties giv­ing us the premises we have now.

With our own gym­na­sium and some new equip­ment, our gym­nasts per­formed well against the best clubs in the East­ern Coun­ties region, com­pet­ing at Regional and National events, some­times win­ning medals. In Novem­ber 1993, Liam Duffy was instru­men­tal in the East­ern Region U12’s team win­ing the gold medal at the National Devel­op­ment Plan Finals in Lilleshall. 

Our high­est ever placed male gym­nast though, was Dan Thomas, who at age 17 rep­re­sented Great Britain at the Junior Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships held in Hun­gary in 1989. The most notable female achieve­ment was Simone Townsin who in the early 1980’s com­peted for the East­ern Region Team at the National Finals held in Wem­b­ley Arena. Many gym­nasts though, have rep­re­sented BGC in both the County and Regional train­ing squads as well as County, Regional and National com­pe­ti­tions, all of whom have been a credit to our club. But our club is not just about com­pe­ti­tion and the elite gym­nasts, it’s about par­tic­i­pa­tion, enjoy­ment and self improve­ment. That’s why in the past 36 years our club has helped train well over 2000 Boys and Girls in the sport of Gym­nas­tics. All of them have not only improved their fit­ness but learned self dis­ci­pline and devel­oped their char­ac­ters, many going on to become coaches themselves.