Grass Court Trails · East Anglia, England
The East Anglian Coast
Four seaside grass venues from the Essex coast to the Wash, three of them open to visiting players.
- Clubs
- 4
- Allow
- 3 to 4 days
- Route
- 178 km (111 miles)
- Best time
- June to early September, when the grass courts are open (Cromer usually opens its grass from mid April; Hunstanton hires its courts from May to September). August is tournament month on this coast.
This trail follows the East Anglian coast north from Essex to the Wash, linking four seaside venues where grass court tennis has been played since the late Victorian and Edwardian years. Each town grew as a resort, and each built its tennis around summer visitors and an annual tournament week. Several of those weeks still run, which gives the coast an unusually busy grass calendar in July and August.
The courts vary in character. Frinton-on-Sea, founded in 1899, is a large private club with 16 grass courts, yet it sells day, week and month visitor passes and lets non-members book its grass and hard courts online. Felixstowe, where an open tournament was first played in 1885, keeps nine grass courts and a busy summer of junior and county events. Cromer's ten grass courts have been rated among the best in the country, and the club openly welcomes non-members for a court fee. Hunstanton is different again: a council recreation ground whose grass courts anyone can hire from May to September, and which in August hosts a tournament week that draws more than a thousand players.
The trail suits two kinds of visitor. Players who want several sessions on good grass without joining a club will find three of the four stops open to them, with Felixstowe a matter of asking the club in advance. Spectators can plan around the tournament weeks: County Week, the junior weeks and the Hunstanton tournament offer close views of grass court tennis at club and county level, and Felixstowe has said its summer tournaments are free to watch.
Use the stops in order from south to north, or reverse them if you are arriving from the Midlands. Book courts a few days ahead in high summer, check each club's dress and footwear rules before you travel, and allow for rain: the coast is often breezy, and grass is not played when wet.
Distances are straight lines between clubs, as a guide to the shape of the trip; road distances are longer.
The stops
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Frinton-on-Sea Lawn Tennis Club
Founded in 1899 as a private members' club, Frinton has 16 grass courts alongside 8 all-weather courts, which makes it one of the largest grass court clubs in the country. The club has hosted an international seniors tournament on its Holland Road courts for more than four decades.
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17 km (11 miles) from the previous stop
Felixstowe Lawn Tennis Club
Felixstowe has played host to tennis since the Felixstowe Open Lawn Tennis Tournament began in 1885, the forerunner of the East of England Championships. The club on Bath Road keeps nine grass courts, tended by a full time groundsman, and runs a summer of events that has included an ITF World Tennis Masters tournament, LTA British Tour events, County Week in July and the long running Felixstowe Junior Week in August.
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107 km (66 miles) from the previous stop
Cromer Lawn Tennis & Squash Club
Cromer's ten grass courts were laid out beside Norwich Road in 1907, and the club's first annual tournament followed in 1908; a 2019 LTA report called them some of the best grass courts in the UK. The club hosts County Week, a junior week and the Norfolk senior tournament, whose past winners include Dorothea Lambert Chambers and a young Ann Haydon, later Ann Jones.
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54 km (34 miles) from the previous stop
Hunstanton Recreation Ground
These council run courts, which the borough council describes as some of the finest grass courts in the area, are the home of the Hunstanton tournament, first played around 1920 and now a seven day event each August with more than a thousand entrants. During tournament week the recreation ground is marked out with many more grass courts than the ten hired out in normal weeks.
More trails
- The London Circuit London
- Surrey to the South Coast Surrey and the south coast, England
- The Continental Grass Season Germany and Switzerland
- Perth’s Grass Belt Perth, Western Australia
- Adelaide’s Grass Courts Adelaide, South Australia
- The Murray River Grass Trail Victoria and the Murray River
- America’s Gilded Age Grass Massachusetts to Pennsylvania
