Tate Papworth
The St Albans Tennis Club celebrates an historic milestone this month.
The club officially turns 100 and while there’s currently not an option to celebrate, club members say they’ll more than make up for it when COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.
Jimmy Knowles was a member of the tennis club from the 1950s and said the club was established during the most trying of times.
“St Albans in the 1920s was a small village with 75 families and a total population of between 200 and 300 people,” he said.
“It was a time of population growth after WW1 as well as a consolidation of village development around the railway station.
“In January 1920 the St Albans Progress Association decided to take over a vacant piece of land and make a public tennis court for the use of the residents.”
However, such were the times that there was no cash to splash available, so the fencing around the courts wasn’t completed until 1924 and the pavilion started later that year.
By the mid 1950s the local population was over 5,000 and it wasn’t long before some of the new arrivals were joining the sporting and recreational clubs.
Mr Knowles still remembers stepping into the club for the first time.
He went on to play a major role in the club’s survival in the 1950s when it was on the verge of collapse and then again in the 1990s when the council wanted to move it to another location.
“Probably the biggest threat to the St Albans Tennis Club occurred in 1994 when the McDonald’s fast food company moved to acquire the site for one of their outlets. “Sunshine Council supported the proposal and were going to close the tennis courts and relocate the club somewhere else.
Thankfully the local protests won the day and the tennis club stayed where it belonged.”
