Walter Kimberley’s wartime experience is one of hardship, effort, determination… and ultimately death, though not by any bullet wound. His is a story that shows war can claim casualties away ...
Think of the grass court tennis season in England, and it is natural to think of Wimbledon, strawberries and cream, and a very ‘English’ tradition. Leamington’s role in that tradition, ...
Tom Wills, educated at Rugby School, Warwickshire, was an Australian sporting genius. He created Australia’s national code of football; and was the central figure in Australia’s most compelling cricket story.
Born ...
Until Webb Ellis’s definitive act, the game of football allowed the ball to be handled, but the player could not hold it and run towards the opposite goal. Progress forward ...
Hosting the Ryder Cup
By 1985, The Belfry was ready to host the Ryder Cup. This was the ultimate test for the Brabazon course and it passed with flying colours, as ...
The first racing in Warwick was held in 1694, hoping to raise money for the town after the great fire of that year. The first race at what is now ...
As well as the ongoing rivalries and development of the game on the field throughout the 1860s, there was another important area where progress was being made. This is an ...
The story of the game we love and play today begins at Rugby School, that much is true. How a boy by the name of William Webb Ellis became so remarkably ...
I have previously written about Walter Kimberley, a Coventry City footballer who lost his life during World War One. He was not the only former Coventry City footballer to suffer ...
When Charles Tuller Garland (1875-1921) decided to feature a real tennis court at Moreton Hall, he commissioned the World’s finest-ever court builder: Warwickshire-born Joseph Bickley.
The Tuller Garlands could trace their ...
Edward James ‘Ted’ Johnson (b. 1879), Moreton Morrell’s first professional, served the club for 65 years. The court’s inaugural match saw a contest between Ted and Peter Latham, five times ...
In addition to being the home of the World’s oldest tennis club, Leamington played a pivotal role in the development of ‘Lawn Tennis’ – a game which appears to have ...
Moxhull Hall
The hotel we now know as The Belfry originated in the thirteenth century, when it was known as Moxhull Hall or Manor, when it had been a manor of ...
William and Ernest Renshaw (b. Jan. 3, 1861, Brandon Parade, Royal Leamington Spa) dominated the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club’s tournament in Wimbledon during the 1880s and are credited ...
The Schneider family had the misfortune to be Germans living in Kenilworth at the outbreak of the First World War, and August was an English passport-holding German in Germany at ...
The old Rugby racecourse lies next to the A5, just a couple of miles east of the town itself, at Clifton on Dunsmore. Racing took place there between 1862 and ...