A Brief History of the Club

Our club was founded around 1922.  At least 1922 is the date on our oldest club trophy - for mens singles.  We began playing tennis on our present site in 1924. Prior to that that we’d been a section of the Didsbury Cricket Club on Wilmslow Road., where tennis courts were being laid just before the outbreak of WW!.  By 1924 the tennis members had decided to set up on their own, we don’t know for what reason. The move cannot have been easy. When a site in Parrswood Road had been purchased with the aid of substantial loans, it is said that members dismantled their wooden clubhouse, brought it down to where we are today, re-assembled the building and had some six courts laid, two of grass and four of shale. There is another story that the clubhouse was brought down to its new site on a lorry pulled by an elephant hired for the occasion from a travelling circus ! That may be just a nice story - but who knows ?

Unfortunately we now have no records of the club in the 20s and 30s. After WW2 the grass courts were unusable and by the 1970s the four shale courts were in very poor condition. The club still had debts from the original loans, money was scarce, and by the end of the 70s there was a real danger of the club folding. The club committee considered selling the land where the grass courts had been but worried that there would then be no scope to redevelop in the future. Little did we know, but history was about to intervene....