The Avenue - History
1902 - 1920 ; 1921 - 1946 ; 1947 - 1967 ; 1968 - 1989 ; 1990 - present
The Avenue Lawn Tennis & Squash Club dates back to 1902 when a group of players leased 4 grass courts on Havant Recreation Ground from the council. It was recorded that the council were required to cut and mark them for the members use. In 1908 the subscription was recorded at 7/6 per member. The first American tournament was held in May 1908.
The first Open Tournament took place in 1910, although not a national tournament which is how it became. It continued every year with the exception of the years during both wars until 1947, when it became officially open.
In 1912 the club became affiliated to the Hampshire LTA at a cost of one guinea. In 1915 the war took the men to the front, and resignations were recorded as ‘leave had been granted to join the service’. No more minutes at meetings were recorded until 1919 after the Great War had finished.
In 1919 the decision was taken to move to the present site, and in order to finance this subscriptions were increased to 31/6 for gents and 21/- for ladies. In December that year the club became knows as the Avenue Lawn Tennis Club, and in 1920 the move to the present site was completed.
It took only 2 years for the club to be out of the red, having paid for the small pavilion and ground levelling.
In 1924 subscriptions were raised to 42/- for gents and 31/6 for ladies, leaving existing members at a lower fee. Five years later five new grass courts were laid, making nine in all. In 1939 a new pavilion was built, positioned where the car park and court 1 adjoin.
The Second World War posted major problems, not least the lack of petrol for the mower and no new tennis balls. There was also a lack of funds from a reduced level of subscriptions. A meeting was called in 1942 to discuss the various problems, but no mention was made of getting by without balls!
During the war one row of courts had not been used, the club was overdrawn and subscriptions had to be raised again, this time to £2.12/6. 1939 saw tennis balls again in supply. It was arranged that one member should graze his sheep on the unused grass courts.
1947 saw the reintroduction of the Open Tournament, although still limited to a ten mile radius. It made a handsome profit of £26.17.9. Also in 1947 a new lease was obtained from the owner, Miss Marter, of 21 years. The rent was £15 per year but the café was sub-let (where the One Stop shop is today) and the market garden (where Woodpecker Close is today) for £13. There was a private entrance into the café for afternoon teas. In the following year the Open Tournament became truly Open. Croquet was also played at the Avenue and in 1955 a croquet match was played on 2 courts. One of the club juniors who rose up to play in the 1st team at the age of 18 became the Hon. Secretary in 1954. This was Miss Pamela Parker who we now all know as Pamela Blowe, still a stalwart club member serving on committees and still playing!
In 1959 three shale hard courts were laid where courts 5, 6 and 7 are today. Also that year saw the President Tom Chignell become the first person to record 50 years membership, although not a playing member. Roy Clarke in 1980, Pamela Blowe in 1999 and Eric Udal in 2003 have all achieved 50 years playing membership.
In 1964 Miss Marter died and Havant Council purchased her land which included the Avenue Club, the market garden, the thatched cottage and most of the lane between Emsworth Road and the shore. The land surrounding Pook Lane was sold, Miss Marter’s house demolished and the current housing estate built.
A lease committee was formed and instructed to try to purchase the club grounds and thatched cottage. Initially the council refused to sell and it is a tribute to their determination and the four trustees (Ted Byerley, Cyril Davis, David Lock and Graham Morris) that the land was eventually purchased on September 25th 1967 for the sum of £5,000. This was financed by a £2,500 grant from the Department of Education and Science, a £1250 loan from the LTA and £1250 from club funds. The agreement included the council retaining a ransom strip around the club effectively making it impossible to re-sell to anyone other than the council. They also retained the row of courts adjacent to the Emsworth Road (now Nightingale Park) and most of the market garden (now Woodpecker Close). A new entrance was created in Southleigh Road replacing the entrance adjacent to the café on the Emsworth Road. This entrance was a track winding between an avenue of trees. Longstanding club member Eric Udal believes that is how the club originally got its name.
In 1969 the Open Tournament changed from a pre-Wimbledon
date to one in August. About this time where hard courts 1-4 are now were
converted from market garden land to grass courts for juniors. The only
problem was for the first few years lupins kept popping up!
Early seventies saw discussions for building an extra hall for indoor
badminton or squash. As squash was popular at the time it was decided
to build two squash courts and these were completed in 1972. The Club
then became The Avenue Lawn Tennis and Squash Club. In 1973 the present
club house was completed for approximately £12,000.
In 1976 the first tennis club assistant was employed to work in the office and club members were permitted to wear track suits for the first time. Also that year the third squash court was built.
In 1977 the three shale courts were replaced with three Macadam courts. In 1980, just seven years after the pavilion was built, the state of the changing rooms was discussed at the AGM, and probably every AGM since.
In 1984 the junior grass courts were replaced with four hard courts. In 1985 tennis members were required to provide their own tennis balls. It seems incredible now that up until 1985 the club had always provided balls. In 1989 the subscriptions were £65 for tennis and £50 for squash.
In 1993 the multi-gym was introduced and in 1994 the Emerald hard courts were laid and floodlighting installed on two courts. In 1999 the subscriptions leapt to £184 for tennis and £67 for squash. This was an increase of 490% since 1908, and this was without the balls being provided! In 2001 the four Astroturf courts were laid and the other three hard courts renewed, with new high fencing all around, with floodlighting now on four courts.
The Avenue Open Tournament has been held over the previous 56 years. In its heyday in the seventies, when the event was held as a warm-up to Wimbledon, the tournament attracted players such as Virginia Wade, Roger Taylor and Geoff Masters (an Australian who won the Wimbledon Mens Doubles). On two occasions we had the complete Japanese and Egyptian Davis Cup squads competing in order to gain grass court experience before playing Great Britain. When the event went ‘Open’ we were unable to meet the prize money and expenses required by the professional players and moved our date to August to attract the players on the holiday circuit. In 1992 the event became part of the Reebok tour which allowed us to attract sponsorship and improve the prize money. Several club members were heavily involved in making this tournament a success for so many years, in particular Eric Udal who was referee for 28 years, and on the committee for even longer. In 2004 a new tournament format was introuduced.
The above was condensed from Eric Udal’s notes on committee meetings from 1902 to 1999.
Pictures below from the :
DAMIAN TIMMS CHARITY TENNIS TOURNAMENT – BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY 29TH MAY
2006
The event was a great success, raising
a total amount of £1275.70, which will be divided equally between
the 2 charities Rowan's Hospice and Cancer Research.
Friday September 1st 2006 saw the retirement from
The Avenue of Sally Burbidge the office secretary. There
is little that we can say that would do justice to the service that Sally
has provided to club. Suffice to say, you will be missed by all.
Here
is a picture of Sally at her retirement party on Friday 29th September
receiving some small rewards for her 19 years at the club, presented
by Pamela Blowe (President) - well done for putting up with us all.......
2006 Ladies County Tennis - Hampshire & I.O.W were victorious!
Here are some pictures from the tournament, well done to all who participated.
Here are the winning team from Hampshire & Isle of Wight - well done.
Ladies Squash Team - Winners of Division one in 2006/07
By winning their final match against Winchester Ladies 1st team by 16
points to 7 on Sunday evening, 18th March 2007 the Ladies have come top
of Division One of the Hampshire SRA's Ladies Leagues for the FIRST time
in the club's history.
The seven ladies who have represented the club this season are the captain
Liz Walker, Sue Tant, Alison Barber, Fran Blake, Nicholle Noller, Binky
Hallett and Sandra Johnstone and between them they won seven out of the
ten matches played finishing clear winners with a total of 148 points. By winning the top Ladies Competition they automatically qualified for the ES Cup organised by England Squash.
Saturday Oct 25th 2008 witnessed The Avenue hosting a James Bond evening, to coincide with the upcoming launch of the new Bond movie. The evening raised over £600 in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support. As well as a disco, all those attended we able to play at the roulette table, watch movies projected onto the wall and then dance off the excellent food.
Held on September 12th, the 2nd Annual Chilli Fiesta was a great success. Twenty seven plants were displayed and came all shapes, sizes and colours.
The overall winner was Bronté - congratulations!
Well done to the other prize winners, Alan, Carol and Sarah.
We did have the world's hottest chilli on display and some were even brave enough to try it. The Dorset Naga lived up to it's fiery reputation.
I can attest that it is truly unbelievable. For those who were foolish enough to try, it caused their eyes to water and throat burn.
Why oh why did I choose to try it........?
Winner Bronté with judge Des
Winning plant
The fiery Dorset Naga
Purple chilli plant
Entrants viewing and sampling!
A chilli forest.....
Call My Wine Bluff evening 10.10.09
Winning team "the dregs" - congratulations!
Here is Soz, indicating that yet again he was not telling the whole truth......
1st November 2010
A landmark for The Avenue.
The new door entry, automated and on line court booking system went live.
Well done to all the team and support staff who made this happen. Thankyou for the large number of unsociable hours that you put in to make it a success.
The following is extracted from our News page...........................
14.04.2011 
News updates have been delayed for various reasons including the web developer's PC has died. Hopefully normal service will resume again soon. (Note : this has now been fixed and the pending website updates have been completed.)
12.04.2011 Tennis fixtures list is now available. Click here for a copy.
07.04.2011 Wimbledon ticket winners..... The list of ticket winners is now on the noticeboard in the Club.
08.04.2011 WET PAINT. Beware if you are in the club house. The painters are in (doing a fabulous job) and there is consequently wet paint...........
05.04.2011 
The Advantage Tennis Academy spring newsletter is out. Click here for a copy.
10.02.2011 Club AGM was standing room only. What a turn out.
13.01.2011 The latest newsletter is out! Click here
07.01.2011 
The Christmas Club raffle made £99.66. 
It was held on Sunday Dec 19th and there was a great party feel on the day!
Organiser Ros was amazed at how many people attended, despite the weather......
Probably everyone had "cabin fever" from not being able to go out because of the snow.
The proceeds will go to supporting the Club.
04.01.2011 The gym extension work is progressing well. Here is a sneak preview of how it looks...
25.12.2010
The management team would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.
24.11.2010 Our new door has arrived. A big thankyou to Des for putting in all the hard work organising this.
You cannot quite read it in the picture below, but the door entry reader says "Welcome to The Avenue"
09.11.2010 As a result of the heavy rain, the car park turned into a lake. Many thanks to Colin Manvell for his efforts to reclaim some parking spaces!
01.11.2010 The new on-line booking and door entry sytems are now live! Well done to ALL the team for your efforts.....
29.10.2010 It has been a busy 2 weeks. We have been issuing new access fobs to members and have been holding special sessions from 7pm to 9pm for those who cannot get to the office during the day. The new door readers are in place and the final section of wiring is being put in. We are expecting to go live on Saturday. Further details will be available as soon as we have them!
04.10.2010 Coming soon : Details on the new door entry and online booking system.....
11.09.10 Chilli Fiesta
Well done to Mike Wagstaff who won the magnificent trophy for his corrosive chilli vodka.
Andy Jones's specimen earnt the 'chilli pants' title, an appropriate prize being his reward.
John Horsey's entry was even worse, hence a signed photo of a club reprobate in a greenhouse at West Dean.
Jasper Sherwood was commended for disgusting fertilisation methods and won some Winalot treats.
Adrian Turner, a semi professional, by dint of attending a course on the subject, would have won the floral prize had one been offered,and was sent home to do better next year. All in all - a complete shambles.
Here is the winning item.....
28.08.10 Ross Cooper MORNING BOOT CAMP. Drop and give me 50......... See the fitness page for details ==> fitness
24.08.10 Just announced.............. The 2010 Chilli Fiesta
Saturday 11th September
7.30pm
Entries £1 per plant or product
See the events page for more details!!
23.07.10 County Week 2010. Well done to Northumberland who were victorious in this year, they fielded three sisters as part of their team. East of Scotland finished second. Both these teams get promoted.
Many thanks to everyone who supported the Club and made this another successful event.
05.07.10 The Avenue were accredited with Tennis Clubmark on Wednesday 30th June, and our thanks go to Rob Mort, Roger Manvell and others involved for all their hard work in gaining this achievement.
27.06.10 Tennis Closed Championship results are now available here
14.06.10 Hopefully the gremlins that were rampaging through the door access have now been tamed. Please contact the office if there are any issues,
12.06.10 We have had computer issues that have affected the door access system. Please contact the office if you have problems gaining access. We apologise for any inconvenience.
31.05.10 The charity event was NOT rained off, despite being a Bank Holiday! We raised over £600 (exact amount to be confirmed).
This is to be donated to The Rowans and Cancer Research UK.
All of the tennis courts were in action! Here are some of the sights....
Of course there was cake!
15.05.10 Well done to Portsmouth for making it to the FA Cup. The Club celebrated in true style with approximately 70 people watching the match from the clubhouse. Also well done to our neighbours for what appears to be the largest Pompey flag in the world!
11.05.10 On Sunday 2nd May we held the Club Open day and ...It rained - but the club members shined! The indoor activities were a huge success.
Our squash and racketball coach Richard Hopp said ' All three courts were busy for the 4 hours I was there, and beyond, with people enjoying racketball and squash'.
The Avenue Gym Fitness Challenge was won by Ruth Percival, who really went for it, and won the WH Smith voucher.
Forty new members took advantage of the offer and joined the club on the day - equally spread across Gym, Squash and Tennis. Welcome to the Avenue!
The club's honorary secretary (Sean) took on two racketball challengers and emerged very pink and dripping but smiling. Sean thanks everyone who helped, and joined in, on the day ' especially the juniors who played new sports and joined in with colouring and games in the function room - it made for a very positive atmosphere'.
Sadly, the tennis events couldn't happen but we'd like to thank James Green and James Rosenthal for turning up to do the exhibition match anyway.
The fastest tennis serve competition will now be run at the Bank Holiday Charity Tournament on May 31st... Have you got what it takes to be number one :)
07.05.10 The bar will be open on cup final day. Come along for 3.00pm and enjoy the atmosphere.......
26.03.10 Don't forget the Squash AGM - Thursday 29th April @ 8.00pm
26.03.10 The latest newsletter is out! Click here
25.03.10 Alan Sherwood has recently returned from New Zealand where he decided to bungee jump, for pleasure!
21.03.10 The daffodils are out again - spring is on the way...
15.02.10 The new steps are completed that lead to the clubhouse!
10.02.10 £3,792 raised for the Rowans hospice. Well done to Bev and all who supported, this is a fantastic achievement!
01.02.10 The latest newsletter is out! Click here
01.01.10 Wishing all Avenue members a very happy new year.
18.12.09 The new outside steps are under construction..
but the tennis courts are out of action, as it is snowing...
08.12.09 Closure of Gym on Tuesday 29th December 2009 until 5pm. To keep the gym in tip top order, it will undergo a 'decor/cleaning blitz' and therefore will not be available to use until 5pm.
25.11.09 Well, for those who have not ventured round the Club House due to the recent inclement conditions, the steps leading to the balcony have gone.... We're awaiting the new ones to arrive.
10.10.09 Congratulation to "the dregs", they were this years winners of the Call My Wine Bluff evening.
03.10.09 Old Chestnut is currently available at the bar, with Dan serving....
03.10.09 Well, autumn appears to have arrived....
12.09.09 The 2nd Annual Chilli Fiesta was held in the club house. Congratulations to Bronté who was awarded 1st prize.
Further prizes were awarded to Alan, Carol and Sarah. Well done to all who participated. Further pictures and details can be seen here ==> 2nd annual chilli fiesta
08.09.09 The newsletter is out! Click here
30.08.09 Well done to Pete Davies for completing the 3 Peaks Challenge in 29 hours. The last 2 climbs and descents (Scafell Pike and Snowdon) were completed in gale force winds, fog and horizontal driving rain as well as the descent from the summit of Snowdon in the dark!! So far the team has raised in excess of £10,000 for Leukaemia Research.
21.08.09 Avenue Tennis Tournament Winners 2009
At a well-attended finals day ceremony, club president Des Barker awarded trophies to tournament winners".
Ladies Singles - Liz Lim
Ladies Doubles - Tracy Manvell & Anna Atkins
Men's Handicap Doubles - James Green & Trent Stirman
07.08.09 Squash court C (glass back) is now available for use.
29.07.09 Two new events announced - the Chilli Fiesta and a Call My Wine Bluff evening. Check the Events page for further details.
28.07.09 The website has been fixed to allow people with Internet Explorer 6 to navigate successfully. Thanks to the anonymous member who reported the problem.
20.06.09 The shirts are now available to collect from the Club Office.
16.06.09 The Summer Ball has been cancelled.
15.06.09 The shirt supplier has advised that the shirts are currently being embroidered and should be with us soon.
31.05.09 The on-line shop is now closed.
30.05.09 Well done to Des' Team for winning the Quiz..
09.05.09 Our new on-line shop is launched! Click here to view the shirts available to order ==> on-line shop
08.05.09 Racketball evening announced for Friday May 22nd 6.00pm to 8.00pm - all welcome
29.04.09 Quiz night announced for Friday May 29th at 8.00pm.
28.04.09 The grass courts are now open and were featured on the local news!
26.04.09 Well done to Tatiana for completing the London marathon.
20.04.09 Added Tennis match fixtures list to the Tennis page
15.04.09 Summer Ball I have received advance notice that a summer ball is to be held on 20th June. From 7.30pm until late.
14.04.09 Pete Davies is undertaking the Three Peaks Challenge in memory of Gemma Battersby. More details available at : http://www.inmemoryofgem.blogspot.com/
To donate, you can visit : http://www.justgiving.com/inmemoryofgem
11.04.09 Squash news
CONGRATULATIONS Both Avenue Men’s 1 & Avenue Veteran’s Squash Sides have won their respective Divisions for 2008/9.
The teams will be promoted to the Premier Divisions of the Hampshire Squash Rackets Association Men’s & Veteran’s Leagues next year.
Overall it has been a very encouraging season for Avenue Squash.
Plus, the annual championships results are now available here ====> Championships
28.03.09
Added the squash AGM agenda and minutes of 2008'smeeting to the Events page.
25.03.09
Spring has officially arrived. So have the daffodils outside the club!
14.03.09
Check out the tennis page. Calendar details of forthcoming events for adults, juniors and mini tennis have just been posted.
12.03.09
The Spring Newsletter has been sent out. Please check the Newsletter page if you have not received a copy.
26.02.09
The grounds team have already started work on the tennis grass! You have to be at the club early to Mike and Graham in action...
25.02.09
Annual Closed Squash Championship Tournament entries are now being accepted. (Tournament is 31st March to 5th April.)
Closing date for entries is March 17th.
Please enter at the Tournament Noticeboard in the Clubhouse.