Talk:Edgbaston Priory Club

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The following was added on 12:00, 17 November 2020 by an editor but is unsourced. Someone familiar with the institution may be able to better identify and integrate relevant information.


 * "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." I believe this (another local club) to be a reference to the Edgbaston Archery & Lawn Tennis Society. This was formed in 1860 as the Edgbaston Archery Society and occupied the site in Hall Hill Road, now Edgbaston Park Road, which was taken over by the Edgbaston Cricket club when the Edgbaston Archery Society moved to its current location next to the Botanical Gardens in 1867. Lawn tennis pioneer Harry Gem was indeed a member of the Edgbaston Archery Society, which was certainly playing Sphairistike (Major Wingfield's game later to be known as Lawn Tennis) by 1875, if not the year before. Major Wingfield's game was not on the market until 1874 and the first person in Birmingham to buy one of Wingfield's Sphairistike sets in 1874 was Augustus Calthorpe of Perry Hall. The game played by Harry Gem and his friend and co-pioneer was not played in public until they formed their lawn tennis club at the Manor House Hotel in Leamington Spa in 1874. Robert Holland, Trustee, Edgbaston Archery & Lawn Tennis Society.

–Q8682 (talk) 07:43, 26 February 2023 (UTC)