Vic Beaman

The son of an architect, Vic Beaman was born in Kent but moved to Chester when he was 10-years-of-age. He attended the local College School, and after finishing his education moved to London, and it was there that he took up competitive swimming, and was coached by national champion Rob Derbyshire at the Lime Grove Baths. In 1913, Beaman was a member of the team that won the coveted Whiteley Mile race on the River Thames. He later joined the Shepherd’s Bush water polo team until the outbreak of World War I when Beaman, a keen cyclist, joined the 25th County of London Cyclists’ Battalion. After initial duties at home, he was posted to India when he was twice the winner of the British Army’s 110 yards swimming title in Calcutta.

Beaman left the Army in 1919 and returned to Cheshire, where he joined the Chester Swimming Club and remained a member of the club up to the time of his death. He was the one-time 50-yard champion of Chester and won the prestigious local 11⁄2 mile event on the River Dee three years in succession - 1920, 1921, and 1923 (there was no race in 1922). It was at water polo that he excelled, however, and in 1922 he helped Cheshire win the English County Water Polo Championship. That same year Beaman finished second in the Northern Counties’ Mile Championship at Southport. Beaman won the first of his 22 England and Great Britain water polo caps in 1923 and he had the honour of captaining the British team at the 1927 European Championships at Bologna.

Beaman spent much of his working life in his mother’s ironmonger’s shop in Chester until it closed, when he then went into the photography business. His wife Ada was also a local swimming champion and won 11 successive Chester Ladies’ titles, and between 1922-25 won four consecutive Cheshire County titles.