Alderney Tennis Club

Over the years there have been a number of private tennis courts built on the Island but never a Tennis Club. That changed in the early nineteen eighties when a small group of enthusiastic Island residents started playing at the Grand Hotel court. The hotel had been recently destroyed by fire and the owner, Ray Parkin the current Club chairman, decided to keep the hotel’s tennis court and swimming pool open to the public whilst endeavouring to rebuild the hotel.

A small tennis group was started by Ray’s wife, Jeanne, and was so successful that it soon became apparent that one court was not enough; a second court, owned by Ian and Gill Waterfall at their nearby home, was made available.  With demand increasing steadily, it was decided to form a properly constituted Club and in 1986 The Alderney Tennis Club came into being. The aim of the Club was to provide a first class facility not just for members but also for visitors and most importantly, to provide tennis coaching for children.

The site, a former rubbish tip, was on States land at Platte Saline. The Island Government were very supportive and gave the new Club a fifty year lease with a peppercorn rent.  In 1990 the Club was formally constituted.  A layout design, drawn up by the chairman, was approved and a fund raising group set about and raised the £100,000 or so needed to provide the Club with four LTA approved acrylic courts built to championship standard.  Included was a practice wall and a junior size short tennis court for children (which, incidentally, was the first and still is, the only club court built specifically for children in the Channel Islands.) All this was to be set in a spacious and pleasing setting that would do credit to the Club and to the Island.

The remainder of the project; the landscaping, the raking and sowing, the raised lawns which give a better view of play and the planting of a perimeter fence of 650 Eleagnus bushes, was carried out entirely by two dozen or so members of the day.

With the Club in operation and as income came in from membership and energetic fund-raising, our ongoing commitment to providing coaching facilities to Island children has been one of the great success stories of the Club.  Children’s tennis tuition and all the fun that goes with it, has provided more than a generation of Island children with skills that will stay with them for ever. Two or three times a week, in the Island Hall during the winter and more frequently during the summer at the Club, our unpaid coaches teach groups of children, from 5 to 16 years, different stages of tennis.

Ray Parkin