Overview
The Thames Ditton Lawn Tennis Club is a lawn tennis club in Thames Ditton, Surrey, England.
It was established in 1882, nine years after the official rules of lawn tennis were laid down. It is the oldest lawn tennis club still on its original site. Long after most clubs have replaced grass with various types of all-weather surface, Thames Ditton retains six outstanding grass courts and four newly installed artificial clay courts.
Legal history
In the late 1990s, as the lease of the land on which the Club plays came to an end, the survival of the TDLTC came under threat. The owner of the freehold wanted to sell the site to a residential developer. A question was raised in the House of Commons about the vulnerability of sports clubs to greedy developers: Hansard. The case entered the legal textbooks as Coppin v Bruce-Smith (1998) EGCS 55 (CA). Briefly:
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