Early lawn tennis - the Birmingham connection

Robert Holland is a former Honorary Secretary and Chairman, now a trustee, of Edgbaston Archery & Lawn Tennis Society, the oldest lawn tennis club in the world, and a former council member of the Warwickshire LTA. He is also the founding trustee of the Harry Gem Project which, among other activities, raised the funds and commissioned the restoration of Harry Gem’s grave in Warstone Lane Cemetery in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. In 2019 the Project arranged for blue plaques to be erected at the homes of lawn tennis pioneers Harry Gem and Augurio Perera in Royal Leamington Spa.

Robert’s talk will start with the arrival of lawn tennis in 1874. In particular, Robert will expand on the story of Harry Gem and Augurio Perera, the game they devised at Perera’s Edgbaston home in the late 1850s and their later club in Royal Leamington Spa - the first lawn tennis club in the world. Finally, he will tell the little-known story of Birmingham’s connection to the lawn tennis competition at the first modern Olympics in Athens 1896.

Host or Publisher The Birmingham & Midland Institute