The Wiltshire Lawn Tennis Association is a hundred years old. The inaugural meeting was held in Trowbridge on March 14, 1924, under the chairmanship of Ward Soames with ten others present.  In advance of the meeting ten clubs had indicated their support for the creation of the association: Salisbury Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club; New Sarum LTC; Riverside LTC Salisbury; Chippenham LTC; Malmesbury LTC; Wilts Archers; Devizes LTC; Trowbridge Westbourne; Swindon Town LTC; and Bulford LTC. 

A management committee was formed, made up of representatives from the clubs and the principal officers of the association. T. C. Usher, chairman of Ushers, the well-known Trowbridge brewery, was elected as President, and Dr A. H. Wilson from Salisbury was appointed Secretary and Treasurer.  

According to the minutes of the meeting all those present voted unanimously in favour of forming the association ”with the object of furthering the interests of lawn tennis in the county and, more especially, to manage and select teams for the inter-county lawn tennis championships”.  It was also agreed that each affiliated club should pay an annual subscription of 10s 6d. Ladies and gentlemen who were active lawn tennis players and not members of clubs should be admitted as personal members on payment of an annual subscription of 3s.

The early days of lawn tennis

In the years preceding this event lawn tennis had been gaining ground in Britain as a major national sport.  Invented in the 1870s, it was loosely based on the long-established game of real tennis.  Compared to the ancient game (which was a favourite sport for Henry VIII), lawn tennis was more accessible, more sociable and more athletic, and it attracted wide interest. Some of the new clubs, like Wimbledon, were originally croquet clubs, but croquet soon gave way to lawn tennis. As one writer put it, croquet was “too tame, too slow, and boring to men of action”.

The All England Croquet Club was founded in Wimbledon in 1868, and it remained exclusively a croquet club until 1875.  It was then in financial difficulty and needed a second source of revenue, hence the decision to set aside part of the grounds for tennis; the name was later changed to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. 

Wimbledon staged its first championships in 1877.  Just 12 men competed in that first tournament, and no women.  By 1914 there were 128 players in the men’s singles at Wimbledon, mostly British, but with a sprinkling from overseas.  The women’s singles event had started in 1884 with 14 competitors, rising to 64 by 1914.  One of the leading British players during that period was Violet Pinckney from Salisbury, who competed regularly at Wimbledon before and after the first world war; she reached the quarter finals of the women’s singles in 1920.

At the national level the administration of the sport was put in the hands of the Lawn Tennis Association, which was responsible for the rules of the game, the size and layout of the court, and the scoring system. Founded in 1888, the LTA later formed close links with the All England Club, including an arrangement whereby most of the profits from the Wimbledon championships were passed to the LTA for the development of tennis throughout the country; the LTA gave grants to the county tennis associations to support local clubs. It also set up an annual inter-county tennis tournament, known as county week, which became an important event in the tennis calendar.

Wiltshire tennis before 1939

One of the first Wiltshire clubs, the Salisbury Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, was founded in 1895 on land owned by the sixth Earl of Radnor, Jacob Pleydell Bouverie.  The club later acquired ownership of the site, and more courts were built.  Tennis has been played there for nearly 130 years, and the club has played a major role in the development of tennis in the county. 

Another Salisbury-based club, Riverside, was founded in 1913 with three grass courts situated by the River Avon in Harnham; it later moved to a different site, amongst the allotments behind Sarum St Paul’s School.  Also in 1913 the Trowbridge Westbourne Tennis Club was founded by 45 enthusiasts who bought a site in the heart of the town and later built a clubhouse; the club continues to operate from this site, alongside the bowls club.   

In the northern part of the county several clubs were established before and after the first world war.  The Marlborough club was set up in 1911 on land opposite the common at the top of Kingsbury Street. A surviving notice shows that the club ran a mixed doubles tournament in 1933; the entry fee was 2s 6d per player and “partners could be arranged if necessary”.  In Chippenham six grass courts were built at Hardenhuish Park in 1938 as part of the multi-sport Chippenham Sports Club.

Wiltshire Archers was founded as an archery club in 1852 – archery was then a popular sport – and it took up tennis not long after the game had been invented. The club’s first tennis tournament was held at Neston Park, a country house near Corsham, in 1878. 

Other clubs got their start by acquiring or borrowing land from the local cricket club.  Purton Tennis Club was formed in 1912 when the cricket club offered to provide and maintain two courts on their outfield.  That arrangement continued until the outbreak of the second world war, when concrete pill boxes and a deep anti-tank trench were built across the middle of the courts.  The club was re-established on a different site after the war.

There was also a growing number of private courts, some of them built by farming families which had land available.  Henry Billington, Wiltshire’s star player in the 1930s, had a farming background. He was born in Devizes in 1908, when the family lived in the nearby village of Roundway.  They moved to Shalbourne and then to Ham which was where Henry learned his tennis. He later had his own farm in Berkshire, first at Inkpen and then at Thatcham near Newbury, but he remained committed to Wiltshire. By the mid-1930s he was recognised as one of the country’s outstanding young players.  At Wimbledon in 1938 he nearly took a set off the great American player, Donald Budge.

Henry Billington in play against Donald Budge Wimbledon 1938

Another farming family which made a big contribution to Wiltshire tennis was the Chamberlains at Ambrose Farm in Ramsbury.  Harry Chamberlain’s two children, Violet and Roger (generally known as Boy Chamberlain), played for the county in the 1920s and 1930s and served the Wiltshire LTA in various capacities. Violet Chamberlain (later Mrs L. G. Owen) was a regular Wimbledon player. 

Following the success of Wimbledon, many other tournaments were started around the country.  In Wiltshire a notable event was the launch in 1898 of what became known as the Wiltshire County Lawn Tennis Championships.  This was a week-long tournament played in Trowbridge on courts specially laid out each summer on the county cricket ground; it attracted entries from around the country as well as from Wiltshire.  The tournament was later affiliated to the Wiltshire LTA, which introduced closed events for Wiltshire-born players.  The president of the tournament committee for many years was Lord Roundway, who lived at Roundway Park in Devizes; his wife, Blanche Colston, was a Wimbledon player – she reached the third round of the ladies’ singles in 1922 and 1923.

Within the county the association organised an inter-club competition in which most of the member clubs took part.  There were three events – men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles.  In 1938 all three events were won by the Salisbury club; Aldbourne was the runner-up in the men’s doubles, Devizes in the other two.

As the minutes of the first meeting show, an early task for the new association was to select the players who would represent Wiltshire in the inter-county competition.  The first trials were held at Trowbridge in May 1924, attended by 16 ladies and 23 men; as befits a rural county, five of the men selected were farmers.  Competition to get into the county team was fierce.  It became a great honour for the selected players to wear the county badge – first an image of the Wiltshire White Horse, later replaced, at Violet Pinckney’s suggestion, by an image of Stonehenge. 

Both the men’s and ladies’ teams were strong enough to make good progress in the inter-county competition.  In 1939, the last county week before the war, the men were promoted from Group Three to Two, the women from Group Four to Three.  The men’s team had a great asset in Billington, but there were other outstanding players.  They included David Milford, a Marlborough College schoolmaster, a remarkable sportsman who, besides his tennis prowess, was also the world rackets champion and a regular member of the British hockey team. 

Several of the players who represented Wiltshire during that period were to play a big part in reviving county tennis after the war; they included Captain Brown from Aldbourne (another farmer), C.A. “Snowy” Horton from Trowbridge and Violet  Owen from Ramsbury, all of whom served as presidents of  the association in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Wiltshire tennis continued to flourish in the years leading up to the second world war.  By 1939 there were 26 clubs affiliated to the Wiltshire LTA and four schools.  In that year the activities of the Wiltshire LTA were suspended (as were those of the LTA in London), although most of the clubs continued in operation during the war. 

Geoffrey Owen in play against Ashley Cooper Wimbledon 1958

After 1945: revival and growth

The fifteenth annual meeting of the Wiltshire LTA was held in Marlborough in April 1946, the first since October 1938.  Among the attendees were Captain Brown, who had succeeded T. C. Usher as president, and Dr Wilson, who continued in his pre-war role as secretary and treasurer; he was also the county’s representative on the LTA Council.  Wilson retired in 1947 after twenty-three years’ service and was replaced by Gerry Vizard, a Salisbury solicitor, who held the post until 1972.

Wiltshire tennis was soon back in full swing.  In 1947 the men’s county week team won promotion to Group One for the first time in the county’s history.  The team was captained by Henry Billington; he and his partner, Derek Leyland, lost only one set during the week.

At that time Henry was one of the top British players; he played in the Davis Cup team in 1946 and 1948.  He had started playing for the county in 1926, and he was still in the 1960 team when we won promotion to Group One for the second time.  The decisive match was played in Birmingham some weeks after the end of county week proper – the last day at Exmouth had been washed out by rain – and Wiltshire beat Staffordshire by six matches to three.  

Apart from Billington, the 1960 team had two other Wimbledon players, Basil Hutchins and Geoffrey Owen; the latter had a brief moment of fame in 1958, when in the opening match at Wimbledon he took a set off Ashley Cooper, the top seed. 

Henry Billington retired from county tennis in 1962 – he had played for the county for no less than 33 years.  Bob Clanchy, who was then non-playing captain, described him as the greatest player Wiltshire had ever had or was ever likely to have.  “His wonderful personality and playing ability have been the inspiration of the team. He and our president Snowy Horton have been the backbone of the county team, both on and off the court, from the very start of Wiltshire tennis”.  Horton had been active in county tennis, as a player and administrator, since the 1920s. 

The ladies also had a strong team in the early post-war years, reaching Group One in 1952.  They were led by Viola White, one of five sisters from Zeals, near Warminster, all of whom played for the county at different times.  Viola played in the ladies’ singles at Wimbledon every year from 1947 to 1961, a record that is probably unequalled.  The 1952 team included several other Wimbledon players – Amy Baker, Mary Lovell, Enid Kerr and  Mary Chamberlain. An unusual, probably unique, event came in 1958 when Ramsbury-based Mary Chamberlain and her daughter Jennifer both came through the mixed doubles qualifying competition – Mary partnered with Basil Hutchins, Jennifer with R. K. Stilwell – to get into the main Wimbledon draw. 

Wiltshire Ladies County Week Team 1956

Back row L to R: Mary Chamberlain, Mary Lovell, Joan Shearing,  Trish Murphy, Amy Baker, Enid Kerr, Will Lovell.
Front row L to R: Viola White, Shelagh Murphy, Violet Owen,  Bridget Chamberlain, Jennifer Chamberlain.

Another Wiltshire player, Ann Owen, competed in the singles and ladies’ doubles at Wimbledon in 1964 and 1965.  A few weeks after her second Wimbledon appearance Ann’s life was tragically cut short when she died in a car accident; she was twenty-four years of age.

Within the county, the Trowbridge tournament was revived in 1947 and it attracted a growing number of players, especially from tennis-playing families. This tournament had the great attraction of running a wide range of events, from the senior men’s and women’s singles at one end to the junior handicap mixed doubles at the other.  This meant that each member of the family, whatever his or her standard, had a good chance of getting beyond the first round and enjoying a full week’s tennis. 

The tournament was played in Trowbridge for a total of 56 years, but in 1966, as a result of high ground rental costs and other overhead expenses, it was moved to Swindon.  

Wills, the cigarette company, made its sports ground and pavilion available free of charge; British Railways also loaned its hard courts without payment. 

This first Swindon event was successful; there were 263 entries including 134 juniors.  The venue was moved to the Civil Service and NALGO club in 1971, and the tournament continued to be held there for some years.  But the days of week-long tournaments, with multiple events involving seniors and juniors of all abilities, were coming to an end.  The LTA was encouraging singles-only tournaments, played over a weekend and with a limited entry, based on each player’s national ranking.  Further changes have been made in the last few years, with the establishment of separate senior and junior tournaments, played each year at different venues.   

In the early post-war years some clubs switched from grass courts to hard, all-weather courts; Aldbourne, which had been founded in 1927 with two grass courts in the centre of the village, built hard courts in the 1970s.  Many of the larger clubs retained their grass courts; the county week tournament, which takes place every summer at fourteen venues around the country, continues to be played on grass.  

One of the most successful clubs was Swindon Hard Courts, which had been set up by Bill Edgington, an established county player, before the war.  Despite having only three courts and not much in the way of changing rooms or other facilities, the club became a training ground for many aspiring young players, several of whom – Mike Huck, Peter Mockridge, Paul Denyer, Laurie Selby among them – went on to play for the county. 

Wiltshire Mens Team 1960

Back row L to R: Graham Daniels, Keith Charlton, Peter Mockridge,  Ian Stevenson.
Front row L to R: Geoff Owen, Henry Billington, Bob Clanchy,  Basil Hutchins

A key figure in the Swindon club was John Franklin, a tireless volunteer who was often to be seen sweeping the courts as well as organising tournaments and coaching young players.  Another was Bob Clanchy, who had played for the county in the 1930s and continued to do so until 1962, before becoming non-playing captain; he later served as president of the Wiltshire LTA.  Many young players owed a great deal to Bob’s enthusiasm and inspiring leadership.  After his death in 1979 the Clanchy family involvement was maintained through his daughter Penny, who served as secretary of the Wiltshire LTA for many years.  

Another strong club was Pewsey.  It was established on its present site in 1951 with three grass courts and now has  six hard courts. A new clubhouse was built in 1999, and  in that year Pewsey won the LTA’s club of the year award.  The Pewsey club was especially active in developing close links with the local community.  It was the prime mover in creating the Pewsey Community Tennis Partnership, involving Kennet District Council, Pewsey Parish Council, Pewsey Leisure Centre and Pewsey Vale Secondary School.  The aim was to promote junior tennis, especially in schools.  

In Ramsbury the starting point for a new club came in 1973 when a group of enthusiasts persuaded several owners of private courts to make their courts available for what was initially called the Newtown Tennis Club.  In 1976 a parcel of land became available in the sports field at the western end of the village, and after much negotiation and energetic fundraising the first court was built in 1978.  A second court was added in 1993, a third in 1994, and a fourth in 1998.  By 2002 there were seven floodlit courts in operation. 

In the nearby town of Marlborough there had been a flourishing club in the inter-war years, but membership declined after the war, and the land was progressively sold off.  For twenty years the club had no permanent home; it relied on courts rented from Marlborough College.  In 2018, after a lengthy search, a new site was found adjacent to the golf course.  Thanks to generous support from local benefactors, and from the LTA, the club now has six all weather courts, all floodlit; a new two storey club house was built last year.

In all these cases, and many more, a crucial role has been played by volunteers – men and women who devote time and effort to all the activities that are needed to maintain and develop the club, from keeping the courts in good order to providing tea and cakes for the players, forming links with nearby schools,  and raising money from local businesses to invest in new facilities. Both at the club and the county level Wiltshire tennis depends on the enthusiasm and dedication of such people; several of them have won the LTA’s meritorious service award in recognition of their contribution to county tennis (see below.)

League Tennis

An important initiative at the club level, which has helped to bring more people into the game, has been the creation of district tennis leagues, in which club teams in different age groups compete against each other throughout the year.

One example is the Chippenham and District Tennis League, which was founded in 1961 at the suggestion of the Westinghouse Tennis Club.  (The American company was then the biggest employer in the area.)  Eight clubs competed in the inaugural season, entering a total of 19 teams.  The league has grown to the point where it now has 26 associated clubs and no less than 116 teams. 

Another is the Swindon and District League, which was founded in 1977 with twelve participating clubs, including Aldbourne, Marlborough, Pewsey, Ramsbury and Purton.  This league now has 24 clubs entering almost 150 teams in 19 divisions.

In the Salisbury area the Sarum league is flourishing; it started with 12 teams, rising to 28 in the  mid-1990s, and it will shortly be launching a new competition for the over 60s.

Disabled Tennis

The clubs have also been active in creating opportunities for disabled people to get involved in tennis.  Thirteen Wiltshire venues are part of the LTA’s Open Court programme, which helps to organise disability specific training sessions.  A great advocate for disabled tennis is Wiltshire-born Louise Hunt Skelley; she represented Britain in wheelchair tennis in the 2012 and 2016 paralympic games and has won numerous prizes in wheelchair tournaments.  Louise now works as a competition director, commentator and mentor for disabled players.  Two of our leading coaches, Lewis and Catherine Fletcher, have been outstandingly successful in deaf tennis tournaments.   

Wiltshire tennis today

As the Wiltshire LTA enters its second century tennis in the county is in good shape.  There are 44 registered venues including 34 clubs (listed at the end of this paper), 77 accredited coaches, and a wide range of tournaments, competitions and other events.  A recent innovation is the creation of the Wiltshire LTA Youth League which last year staged an event that involved 97 teams and 225 players.  This league, together with the organisation of other competitive opportunities in the county, such as “Play Your Way to Wimbledon”, come under the umbrella of the Team Tennis and Competition County Organiser, Sam Kingdon. 

Junior tennis is an essential part of the county scene.  There is a junior committee, and the county runs regular performance and development camps from which the county junior teams are selected.  These camps are run by the county training organisers, Lewis Fletcher and Neil Watts.  Both men are experienced coaches and outstanding players; Neil has played for the county for several years and is now captain of the men’s team.  

Most Wiltshire clubs have at least one professional coach, some of them three or four.  Their task is to help players of  all ages and abilities improve their tennis and enjoy it more.  They also identify and support talented young players who have the potential to play for the county. 

Thanks in part to their coaches (and of course their parents), Wiltshire has produced an impressive number of young players, girls and boys, who have achieved good results at the national and in some cases the international level.  To do that – and this is a big change from the early post-war years, before tennis went professional – ambitious young players now have to start early and be willing to devote most of their time to tennis.

One route which some of them have followed is to win a scholarship at an American university, where they can combine their tennis training with normal academic courses.  Two of the most successful Wiltshire players in recent years have been Amelia Bissett and Giles Hussey. 

Amelia Bissett

Amelia, born in Bath in 2003, was educated at Ralph Allen School and trained for several years at the Bath Tennis Academy.  She played three times at Junior Wimbledon and  in 2020 won the national U18 singles title in Nottingham.  In 2022 she moved to Florida State University; she has done well in singles events in the US and in Europe. 

Giles Hussey

Giles, born in Swindon in 1997, went to Millfield and then to the University of Tennessee.  He won his first professional tournament at Cancun, Mexico, in 2021.  He made his ATP debut at Eastbourne in 2024; having fought his way through the qualifying rounds he reached the last sixteen of the main event.  In January 2025 he was selected as a member of the British Davis Cup team to play Japan.  

Competing on the international circuit takes these players a long way from home, but they generally retain a strong loyalty to the county, turning out for Wiltshire in county week when their schedule allows.  This underlines an important point.  The professionalisation of tennis at the end of the 1960s, while changing the character of the sport in many ways, has not damaged the game at the county level.  Competing for the county remains a great honour, and often a stepping stone to higher things.

Our post-war record in county week has had its ups and downs, but, given the absence of large city-based clubs of the sort which exist in counties such as Surrey, Middlesex and Lancashire, our performance has been highly creditable.  Although neither the men nor the women have so far been able to regain the giddy heights of Group One, they have been performing strongly in the lower groups.  Wiltshire remains a force to be reckoned with in British tennis.   

At the heart of all this are the clubs.  At a time when there are so many other sporting activities available, for young and old, the clubs have to work hard to improve their facilities and to make membership more attractive. They also have to be ready to adapt to new opportunities and changing fashions. 

Two new racket games have been gaining in popularity around the country.  One is padel, played in an enclosed court slightly smaller than regular tennis courts, with softer balls and solid, stringless rackets; as in squash, the ball can be played off the walls.  So far Wiltshire has one padel centre, at Basset Down near Swindon, and others are planned. 

The other is pickleball, played on a badminton-sized court with smaller rackets and a perforated, hollow plastic ball.  Invented in the US as a backyard children’s game, it is easy to learn and start-up costs are low; it has become the fastest growing sport in the US. Pickleball has been taken up at the Delta Tennis Centre in Swindon and the Royal Wooton Basset Tennis Club.  Other clubs, including Pewsey and Marlborough, are putting  on pickleball sessions at local leisure centres. 

These new versions of tennis are unlikely to displace lawn tennis, but if they encourage more people to take up a racket sport and give clubs the opportunity to add a new attraction for existing and potential members, that will be all to the good.  

Meanwhile the Wiltshire LTA is continuing to evolve.  The county association, now run by a small management team led by Philip Evans as chairman (Appendix Three), has to adapt to challenges that are very different from the ones that the founders faced in 1924.  Tennis then was in its early growth phase, an exciting and glamorous new sport which was growing at a spectacular rate.  It was also a middle-class sport, not easily accessible to low-income families.  Strenuous efforts have been made in the last few years, in Wiltshire and elsewhere, to encourage participation in all sections of the community; more needs to be done, especially in schools. 

There has also been a stronger emphasis on protecting the welfare of participants in all county tennis events.  Wiltshire  has a safeguarding officer, Liz Lewis, whose role is to assist  the LTA in ensuring the safety of all children, young people  and adults. Venues are encouraged to adopt and follow  LTA standards and guidelines when organising events and other activities.  

The Wiltshire LTA, in common with its counterparts in other counties, has recently adopted a new legal status.  It has become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, a structure which among other things simplifies the funding arrangements between the county association, member clubs and the LTA in London.  The new structure improves our governance, with an updated and refreshed constitution.  It also enables us to apply for charitable status, which will help our fund-raising potential and our ability to grow our sponsorship revenue and donations.

The new status does not change the Wiltshire LTA’s mission, which is the same as it has always been: to support Wiltshire clubs, players, coaches, volunteers and county teams, and to encourage people of all ages, all backgrounds and all abilities to take up the game. 

LTA Registered Venues

Clubs

Commercial Sports Centres

David Lloyd Club Swindon

Community Indoor Tennis Centres

Delta Tennis Centre 

Parks

Management Team in 2025

Geoffrey Owen – President

Roger Henry – Vice President

Philip Evans – Chair & Trustee

John Heffer – Treasurer

Liz Bissett – Secretary, Trustee and LTA councillor

Andy Dickinson – Trustee

Colin Gratton – Trustee

Liz Lewis – Safeguarding Officer

Kathryn Brooks – County Administrator    

Alicia Hazzard – Padel Ambassador

Hilda Moore – Venue Liaison 

A few photographs

A doubles match at Salisbury Tennis Club in the 1950’s

The Marlborough Tennis Club, founded in 1911, was re-established in 2018 and now has six all weather courts, with flood lighting, and a new two storey clubhouse.

Chiseldon celebrating 40th birthday

Louise Hunt

Lewis Fletcher

Ben Rogers receiving Army Sports Award

Wanborough’s Dan Hopkins is the National Visually Impaired Champion! 

Centenary history: note on sources

This article was written by Geoffrey Owen with help from members of the Wiltshire Tennis management team and others associated with county tennis. It draws on minute books from the early days of Wiltshire LTA, annual reports, press cuttings and the recollections of former Wiltshire players and administrators. We are grateful to Salisbury Lawn Tennis Club for making available the picture which appears above.

Published May, 2025.

Created in association with [email protected]