HISTORY
THE BEGINNING
Didsbury Lawn Tennis Club was founded around 1921.
The club started as a section of the Didsbury Cricket Club on Wilmslow Road where tennis courts were laid before the outbreak of World War 1.
By 1924 the members had decided to set up their own tennis club.
MOVE TO PARRS WOOD ROAD
When a site in Parrs Wood Road had been purchased with the aid of substantial loans, it is said that members dismantled their wooden clubhouse, brought it down to where we are today, re-assembled the building and had some six courts laid, two of grass and four of shale.
There is another story that the clubhouse was brought down to its new site on a lorry pulled by an elephant hired for the occasion from a travelling circus!
AFTER THE WAR
After WW2 the grass courts were unusable and by the 1970s the four shale courts were in very poor condition.
The club still had debts from the original loans, money was scarce and by the end of the 1970s there was a real danger of the club folding. The club committee considered selling the land where the grass courts had been but worried that there would then be no scope to redevelop in the future.
Little did we know, but history was about to intervene ...
REBIRTH FROM THE ASHES
Everything changed when the old clubhouse burned down on the night of the 18 April 1979. At an Extraordinary General Meeting, the members decided to sell the spare land where the grass courts had been, lay new tarmac courts and build a brick clubhouse.
It took quite a while to sort all this out, with a period of playing our social tennis in a local park. We re-opened fully in the summer of 1982.
Since then the club has gone from strength to strength. Our courts are reckoned to be among the best in our local league, and we look forward to many more years on the site the early members took such trouble to establish!
