Henry Tindall


The Reverend Henry Charles Lenox Tindall was a British head master, priest and world-record-holding track athlete; he was also an English first-class cricketer active 1893–95 who played for Kent. He was born in Margate and died in Peasmarsh.
Tindall was born in Margate, Kent, on 4 February 1863 and was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge; while at university he ran and swam, and in 1884–1885 he was Cambridge quarter-mile champion. In 1886, he was president of the University Athletic Club, in the same year he won both the 100 yards and quarter-mile race against Oxford University. In 1888 he won the quarter-mile Amateur Athletic Association championship.
In 1889 he won a quarter of a mile race in 48.5 seconds, a world record that also stood as a British amateur record until 1911. After university he played Rugby for Rosalyn Park and in cricket appeared for Kent from 1893 to 1895. In 1894 he appeared at a match in Hastings for the South of England against The Australians. Tindall was also a member of the Rye Golf Club from 1894 until is death.
He left Cambridge with a second-class degree in the mathematics tripos and he had also been a Tancred Divinity Scholar. He became a mathematical master at Hurst Court School in Hastings, becoming the headmaster in 1905. In 1934 he left the school to become rector of Iden.