Club History
Salisbury Tennis Club has operated in Salisbury Avenue as a popular, family friendly sports facility for over 50 years. Its origins are entwined with a beverage company which produced a juice product used by sailors to ward off scurvy, located on grounds which were once owned by L.Rose and Co. Ltd, manufacturer of Roses’ Cordial Mixer Lime Juice and Lime Marmalade. A number of the Club Tournaments today still carry the Roses’ Sports and Social Club trophies.
During the Second World War, L.Rose and Co. Ltd relocated its bottling plant from central London to Grosvenor Road in St Albans. The Roses’ Sports Club started from humble beginnings during the early years of the War, when some of the Roses’ evacuated employees banded together to form a tennis club in 1940 to “pass away the long evenings”.
The present private club came into being in 1961 when the former owners realized that only two employees actively belonged to the tennis section of Roses’ Sports and Social Club, and that there were 36 associate members who were not actually connected with the Roses’ company. At a special meeting of the Roses' Sports Club, a motion was passed that recognized that the company could no longer justify subsidizing recreational activities, and that the Associate Members should be invited to run the Club privately.
The Club as it stands today was formalised at a special meeting of the members of the Roses’ Sports and Social Club on 3 October 1960 where it was unanimously agreed to proceed with a new Committee and complete the leasing of the grounds, building and equipment to Salisbury Lawn Tennis Club. The formation of the Club would take effect from 1 January 1961.
The core of the new Committee all lived locally in Beaumont Avenue. The commitment of the original club members was reflected in the fact that the Committee virtually met on a monthly basis through that first year in 1961 in order to provide the require impetus to get a new club off the ground…and many of the issues were not dissimilar to the running of the club today.