Boom time for town tennis club

The club is officially recognised as the world’s first lawn tennis club, founded in 1872 by Major Harry Gem, three years before the sport was introduced to Wimbledon.

According to an article in the Courier in June 1963, the membership boom followed the merger of Leamington Lawn Tennis Club and the Warwickshire Croquet and Milverton Lawn Tennis Club to form the Leamington Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

The Courier reported: “Over 300 members play an active part in the various club activities, which include sections for croquet and bridge and a social section. Before the amalgamation there had been a small but very active club at Leamington and a larger club with a dwindling membership at Milverton. Combining their resources has meant that Leamington, by selling their own ground, have been able to spend more money on the Milverton ground – thus affording better facilities to a larger number of people. Over £3,500 has been spent during the year and at present there are seven grass and four hard courts, as well as three croquet lawns.”

Major Harry Gem, a solicitor, and his friend Batista Pereira, a Spanish merchant, both living in Birmingham at the time, invented lawn tennis in the 19th century, playing on a lawn in Edgbaston.

In 1872 they both moved to Leamington and with two doctors from the Warneford Hospital, Dr Frederick Haynes and Dr A Wellesley Tomkins, played the game on the Manor House Hotel lawns in Avenue Road. They founded the first lawn tennis club in the world.

Leamington Lawn Tennis Club grew through associations with other local clubs, particularly the Beauchamp Square Club, whose courts, now public, still exist at the top of the Parade.
By merging with the Warwickshire Croquet Club, the club moved from its then site in St Marks Road to its current site in Guys Cliffe Avenue. In 1973 the first squash courts were constructed, and the club became formally the Leamington Lawn Tennis and Squash Club.