I am the proud owner of Pythouse Club which is located in beautiful open country, between Shaftesbury and Tisbury in the heart of the Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The club was started in the 1870’s as a private cricket ground for my relations, the Bennetts who then owned Pythouse. The Bennetts were very, very keen on cricket and even added 2 huge wings to Pythouse in the 1880’s to accommodate visiting cricket teams. By the early 1900’s the new sport of lawn tennis was introduced and a photo in my possession shows elegant ladies in long white dresses playing on the grass courts at the Club. A 1920’s brochure boasts that Club was used for preparatory tennis matches before Wimbledon, and that the cricket ground was the best south of the Thames, besides the Oval.
The place became a members’ club shortly after the Second World War. In the ‘50s & ’60, when I was a child, the club was a busy, social & sporting focal point for local residents and visiting teams. There were regular cricket matches and tennis tournaments. The swimming pool was a hive of activity & competition, and many parties & dances were held for the members & their children in the elegant colonial style club house, with its enchanting veranda.
The Club went into gradual decline in the mid ‘70s due to lack of investment on the facilities which gradually became increasingly out-moded. The old club finally closed in about 1990 by which time it was in a sadly dilapidated state. I made various attempts to persuade people to revive it but without success. Eventually my wife Holly & I decided to commission the design of a brand-new club house with up-to-date facilities ourselves. We then applied for planning permission and, after a battle royal with the Salisbury District planning department, eventually obtained planning permission in March 2008 to create a new club for local residents and their families. We owe a great debt of gratitude to local residents for their keen support for our plans and also to the local councillors who dared stick their necks out and grant planning permission against the recommendations of their own planning officers.
The new Club will preserve the colonial style of the old club but will have thoroughly modern facilities. The aim is that these will include top quality hard tennis courts, a first rate cricket pitch with pavilion and an outdoor heated swimming pool. In addition current plans envisage a casual but elegant restaurant/brasserie open daily that will offer a menu of fresh, locally sourced ingredients, rooms for exercise classes, swimming and tennis lessons, treatments, a gym and a crèche. It is proposed to establish a resident cricket team and to have bedrooms available for visiting guests, sporting teams & members of reciprocating London clubs etc. To summarize we hope that the new club will again become a sporting & social hub for local residents and for visitors to this beautiful corner of south west Wiltshire on the Dorset border, a landscape of enchanting little hills and valleys, the smallest of which are known locally as Bottoms or Hollows. The bigger valleys include the famed Vale of Wardour and the Nadder Valley.
In order to ensure we achieve these objectives, we need to know what you want from the Club. I would be very grateful therefore if you would take the time to complete and return the attached online questionnaire.
All those returning a completed questionnaire will be entered in a free prize draw to win a case of Berry Bros Good Ordinary Claret. The draw will be held on 3oth November 2008. I am the promoter.
Henry Rumbold
Pythouse Estate Office
Pythouse Walled Garden
West Hatch
Tisbury
Wiltshire
SP3 6PA