History

Chancellors' Challenge Plate

154 matches from 1862 to 2026. Cambridge have won 117, Oxford 37.

Humphry Match

158 matches from 1869 to 2026. Cambridge have won 86, Oxford 58.

What else the archive holds

• Origins
• The Chancellors' Challenge Plate

  The oldest of CURA's Varsity fixtures, and among the longest-running annual contests between Oxford and Cambridge in any sport. In 1862 the Chancellors of the two universities — the 7th Duke of Devonshire for Cambridge and the 14th Earl of Derby for Oxford — presented a silver plate set into a stein for an annual shooting match. Cambridge won the first, 372 out of a possible 672.

• The Humphry Challenge Cup

  CURA's second Varsity fixture, shot at longer range and, since 1897, under match-rifle rules, which permit telescopic sights and other equipment forbidden in target rifle. It began as an informal Inter-University Long Range Match in 1869, shot alternately at Oxford and Cambridge; the fixture lapsed after 1874 and was revived in 1878.

• Other matches
• Trophies

  The cups and plates the club shoots for, with what is known of where each came from.

• Members

  Everyone recorded as having shot in either Varsity match, with their college, the years they turned out, and every score attributed to them.

• CURA Captains
• Colleges

  Which Cambridge colleges have sent firers to the ranges, how often, and how well they shot. Scores are given as a percentage of what was possible in that particular match, so a seven-shot round in the 1860s and a fifteen-shot round today can be compared honestly.

• Photo Album

  The club's album of team photographs, scanned and catalogued. Where the album wrote the names beneath a photograph they are given in the order they stand; where a photograph has come from elsewhere the team is known but the order is not, and it says so.

• What is missing

  An archive is easier to trust when it says what it does not have. These are the gaps: the years with no photograph, and the matches whose result survives but whose shooting does not.