Slough Tennis Club

Where it all started and our partners.

The club has been in existence for 97 years. 

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The club was established in 1921. This is based on the fact that in 1980 councillor Ken Small came to present the club final trophies as it was the 60th anniversary of the club. There was a small article in the Slough Observer as well. The club had about 40 members at that time.

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 The original name of the club was ‘The Old Paludians Tennis club’, but do not know when the name changed to ‘Salt Hill’. In the early days of the club, there were around 15 clubs in Salt Hill alone.

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The indoor tennis centre opened in September 1984 and was originally managed by Ken Fletcher, an Australian who won the Men’s doubles (with John Newcombe) at Wimbledon in 1966. The club had a block booking, one court, on Wednesday evenings from very early on. At that time, the indoor tennis centre and Salt Hill were two separate concerns. The club had its own 3 grass courts in front of the Barn café. The club house, such as it was, consisted of the basement under the café.

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 The courts were maintained by the council for a reasonable yearly fee and this was the case for many years until mid to late 80’s when the fee was raised to a level which the club could not afford even if it wanted to. The club members tried for several years to do this work themselves, but it quickly became clear this was not going to work. The same few people and not enough experience of what we were trying to do. The last club tournament took place in 1994 which would have been on the grass and that was almost certainly the last year that they were used.

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 At that point the club ‘merged’ with the indoor centre. Salt Hill members became members of the centre, but maintained their own identity as Salt Hill, complete with our own committee to run the club. Matches were played on the outdoor courts and we had use of the indoor centre for tea, changing facilities etc. The club achieved Club mark status in 2009.

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In 2010, the council decided to close the indoor centre and convert it into a bowling alley. The outdoor courts still exist.

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However, Slough Tennis Club took the decision to move from the outdoor courts to Salt Hill Park in 2010 to Herschel Grammar School (HGS) where their home league matches were played.

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After 5 seasons at HGS the club developed a relationship with St Bernards Catholic Grammar School and soon moved there in 2015 and have been growing there ever since.

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