Club History

Longthorpe Lawn Tennis Club was created after WWII, around 1950, on land given to the village by the Fitzwilliam Estate.

A Memorial Hall was to be built for the village to commemorate those who had lost their lives in the conflict.

Three grass tennis courts were also added to the planned facility. The season ran from May until early September depending on the weather. The ends of the courts were re-laid at the end of each season as the grass would have completely worn away; a situation which continued until fairly recently.

In the mid Seventies hard courts were considered but there was a lack of funds. However, with a loan from the Lawn Tennis Association, two further grass courts were laid, making five grass courts in total.

The decision to rebuild the Village Hall a few years ago meant that the existing grass courts would be affected. This was a perfect opportunity to redevelop the courts. Funding was found and two high-quality all weather artificial grass courts were built. This transformed the club from being purely a summer venue, and dependant on the British weather, to an all year round club. Once the members had enjoyed the luxury of playing all year round, we decided in the summer of 2009 to push forward to replace courts 3 & 4 with 2 more artificial grass courts which were completed for Summer 2010, giving the club 4 all weather courts that will now allow play all year round. Floodlights to courts 3 and 4 were added in the winter of 2012 with a generous grant from Sport England.