Edgbaston Priory Club
| Predecessor |
|
|---|---|
| Founded | 1964 |
| Type | Sport & leisure club |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 52°27′32″N 1°54′46″W / 52.4589°N 1.9128°WCoordinates: 52°27′32″N 1°54′46″W / 52.4589°N 1.9128°W |
| Services | |
|
Membership
|
3000+ |
|
Key people
|
Rob Bray, Ken Franklin |
| Affiliations | Lordswood Community Tennis |
| Website | www |
The Edgbaston Priory Club is a private members' tennis, squash and leisure club in Birmingham, England. The club is the host of the annual WTA Tour stop, the Aegon Classic. The stadium court has a capacity of 2,500 people (1,000 permanent and 1,500 temporary).
The club boasts a state of the art fitness suite and class studio, a bar and bistro area, indoor and outdoor pools, 30+ tennis courts and 10 squash courts. It is considered one of the premier racquets clubs in the UK.
The Edgbaston Priory was formed by the merger in 1964 of two of the earliest lawn tennis clubs, the Priory Lawn Tennis Club (founded 1875) and the Edgbaston Cricket & Lawn Tennis Club (founded 1878). The Priory started with two courts on the Pershore Road, and moved about a mile to its current site in the early 1880s. Edgbaston Cricket & Lawn Tennis Club was founded by a breakaway from another local club which had played lawn tennis since 1872, and where the inventor of the game Major Harry Gem, who had first played lawn tennis only five minutes' walk from Edgbaston Priory's grounds, was a member.
In the years before the First World War the Edgbaston Cricket & Lawn Tennis Club was the larger and more prestigious of the two clubs. It had more courts, its patrons were millionaire landowners and industrialists, and from 1881 it hosted one of the earliest open lawn tennis competitions, known from 1882 as the Midland Counties Championship. Amongst the winners of this event were Maud Watson, who went on to be the first Ladies' singles champion at Wimbledon in 1884, and the Lowe brothers, Gordon and Arthur, sons of the local MP Sir Francis, both amongst the world's top ten players at their peak. The Priory had a smaller membership and fewer resources, but maintained a full programme of dozens of weekly fixtures, mostly with other Birmingham and Black Country clubs, and developed its own men's and women's competitions from 1887 onwards. In 1896 the Priory was the venue for the formation of Warwickshire County Lawn Tennis Association, and to the present day has consistently nurtured players to county level and beyond. By 1903 the Priory had begun its Whitsun tournament, which proved to be a platform for international talent in the inter-war years.
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Wikipedia