Dick Bridgeman, an advocate for the sport (and later a British Doubles Champion) established what was then the Dick Bridgeman Tennis and Rackets Foundation. Rackets was part of the 1908 Summer Olympics program and was played at the Prince's Club in London the winner was Evan Noel.Īfter the second world war rackets saw a drop in popularity resulting in the closure of some courts and others suffering from a lack of maintenance. The Stagg Field court is often mistakenly identified as having been a "squash rackets" court.
A vacant rackets court built into the University of Chicago's Stagg Field served as the location of the first artificial nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942. Along with real tennis and badminton, rackets was used as an inspiration for the game of lawn tennis, invented in 1873 by Walter Clopton Wingfield. It has been restored as a racket hall, but used as an exhibition area. It is the very first covered racket court and is now the oldest surviving court in the world, as well as being the oldest indoor sports building in Scotland. The floor is of large granite slabs, now hidden by the wooden floor. Įglinton Castle in Scotland, now largely demolished, had a "Racket Hall" which is first shown on the 1860 OS map, but estate records show that it was built shortly after 1839, the first recorded match being in 1846. The lithograph at right from the late 1700s shows school boys 'hitting up' outside the Harrow School 'Old School' buildings. It spread to schools, first using school walls, and later with proper four-wall courts being specially constructed for the game. Rackets then became popular outside the prison, played in alleys behind pubs. They played against the prison wall, sometimes at a corner to add a sidewall to the game. The prisoners modified the game of fives by using tennis rackets to speed up the action. Historians generally assert that rackets began as an 18th-century pastime in London's King's Bench and Fleet debtors' prisons. Rackets being played at a prison-where the game developed
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