In the beginning there was East District. The six counties in ED were Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. This shield was used for the Winners only - who were mostly Essex. Essex included the whole of Essex County including the parts in London Region. So here is the shield, front and back:-

 

The many engravings show that it has been around for quite some time. In fact the first use appears to have been in 1984. With help from Sally Lelean (Norfolk) and David Robinson (ER Records), I have tried to reconstruct its history. In the following table, empty cells are missing results, so if you know any of the missing results, please let me know.

Year

Venue

Winner

Runner-Up

Strangely, the East District was merged into the Midland District. This meant that there were ten counties in the District. For the purposes of the Inter-counties, which could only cater for a maximum of six in any one pool, the ten were divided into six and four, The Midland District Heat 2 consisted of Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Staffordshire and Warwickshire.

Year

Venue

Winner

Runner-Up

The new era was heralded in September 2005 by the formation of the East Region. This was made up of the same six counties as the earlier East District, namely Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and I believe the first IC organised by us was at Peterborough in 2006 with all six East Region teams.

Essex wanted to host the 2007 event as it was their centenary year and donated the current winners trophy (a cup).

I think it was when the districts all changed that the home counties were split between London and another district but this was considered too impractical for the Masters inter-counties competition. So for this event there is no London district and the home counties can pick teams from the whole of their county. For example Romford swimmers can swim for Essex at the inter-counties but are excluded from the East Region decathlon result.

When Essex donated the new trophy (a cup) in 2007 we then used the shield for the runners up.

At this time digital recording made it possible to integrate the results from all counties in England to provide a national county ranking.

Year

Venue

Winner

Runner-Up