There are some places in Plymouth where the past feels surprisingly close.
Mannamead Lawn Tennis Club is one of them.
Tucked away on Eggbuckland Road, the club has a character that feels increasingly rare in a modern city. Behind its gates are tennis courts, lawns and a distinctive wooden clubhouse, a building that seems to belong to another England.
The area itself has old roots. The name Mannamead comes from two great fields, East and West Mannamead, part of the ancient Manor of Compton. From 1856, those fields were bought up and laid out for villas as the city expanded, and in time the whole area took the name Mannamead.
Lawn tennis club life in Plymouth followed close behind, part of a wave of Victorian enthusiasm for the new sport. For players of the era, tennis was as much a social ritual as a game, with formal dress, wooden rackets and a very different atmosphere from the professional sport we know today.
Mannamead’s own early history is harder to pin down than the surrounding suburb’s. Club records from that period were lost to fire, but the club still holds physical evidence of just how far back play here goes.
Chairman Chris Shorter says the club has photographs showing people playing tennis on this very court in 1890 Victorian era proof that lawn tennis has been part of this corner of Plymouth for well over 130 years.
Then there’s the clubhouse.
Nothing captures the club’s character quite like this wooden building. It has an unmistakably traditional English look, more village pavilion than modern Plymouth suburb.
There’s something quirky about it, and it gives the club a sense of identity a modern sports centre couldn’t recreate.
Its origins have long been a mystery. For some time, it was believed the clubhouse began life as an old railway ticket office, but Chris Shorter says that theory has recently been ruled out, and its true origin remains unknown.
If anyone has any idea what the building may originally have been, the club would like to hear from you.
Today, Mannamead Lawn Tennis Club has two grass courts and four floodlit all weather courts. It’s a working club, not a museum.
Teams compete in the Plymouth and District League, alongside social tennis, competitions and a busy winter league.
That’s the most remarkable part of its story.
This isn’t an old building kept for people to look at. People still walk through the gates, pick up their rackets and play.
Mannamead is a quieter kind of Plymouth heritage not a grand monument, just a piece of everyday sporting life where generations of local people have played, socialised and made memories, while the city outside changed beyond recognition.
It isn’t simply a tennis club.
It’s a wonderfully characterful reminder of a traditional England that has, in so many places, disappeared.
Photographs © Wayne Perry / Plymouth Post