Biography
Woodgate was born at Belbroughton, Worcestershire, England, the eldest son of Canon Henry Arthur Woodgate, who was a fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and elder brother of Major General Woodgate who was killed at Spion Kop. Woodgate was educated at Radley College before going up to Brasenose College, Oxford in 1858, where he rowed for Brasenose College Boat Club. At Oxford, the Reverend Woodgate's son earned pocket money by writing sermons. As a fresh-faced Brasenose freshman, he appeared as Lady Barbara in the College play, partook liberally of the wine and four kinds of punch at dinner afterwards, woke in his petticoats, and attended chapel with the rouge still on his cheeks. And two years later he founded Vincent's Club. A larger than life character, he once wagered he could walk the fifty-seven miles from Stones Chop House in London's Panton Street (near Leicester Square) to Brasenose in time for breakfast. He lingered at Oxford well into the 1860s, mainly on the river.
In 1872 Woodgate was called to the bar. He practiced for forty years but took neither the law nor anything else save rowing too seriously and it is as a first-class oarsman and journalistic critic of rowing that he is remembered.
A lifelong bachelor, Woodgate died at Southampton at the age of 79.
Read more about this topic: Walter Bradford Woodgate
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