Durham Archery

The club was formed in 1871 as the Durham Archery and Croquet Club, and still has a croquet medal from that year. Its minutes for October 1874 record that tennis was admitted, with thanks to C. E. Bell for his gift of a set of lawn tennis, in the year Major Wingfield began selling his boxed game. Play is certain by 1876. Its ground, Howle Crofts, was leased from a canon of Durham Cathedral, and Durham University has been its landlord for more than a century.

The winners’ board in the clubhouse begins with A. Monnington, champion in 1878. By 1921 the club had six grass courts and one ash court; in the 1920s and 1930s it had seven grass courts and more than 150 members. By the early 1960s the grass had deteriorated and only three red shale courts were in use, and in 1963 the club came close to closing before members agreed a plan to revive it. Ten years later they largely built the present pavilion themselves.

The club marked 150 years of tennis in 2024 and keeps three grass courts beside its all-weather courts. It understands itself to be the second-oldest lawn tennis club in the world still playing on its original site, a view it says the All England Club shares, after the Edgbaston Archery and Lawn Tennis Society in Birmingham.