The former Bramcote Tennis Pavilion, Scarborough. Photo: Robert Walton
Despite the Victorian Society having placed the former Bramcote Tennis Pavilion on the Society’s Top Ten Endangered Buildings list in May 2024 no action by its owners or the Council to repair or restore the Grade II listed building has taken place. The building needs urgent works to preserve this historic structure that dates from the earliest days of the modern sport. Recent storms have damaged the building to such a degree that the Victorian Society, the national amenity society for the Victorian and Edwardian period, local people and elected representatives are calling for immediate action to ensure the building is saved for this and future generations.
The Victorian Society has written to North Yorkshire Council calling on the Council to take decisive action to ensure that the building is now repaired – up to and including compulsory purchase.
The Scarborough & District Civic Society has been vocal in its concern for the building and is keen to see it restored, having succeeded in getting the building listed at Grade II. The Victorian Society added the building to our heritage at risk list last year. Most recently local Councillor Rich Maw has spoken out about local residents, and his own, fears for the pavilion’s future.
Thomas Ollivier, Conservation Adviser, the Victorian Society, said:
“The deterioration of the built environment is as unavoidable as the passage of time. Our buildings rely on us to survive and to be looked after. Often, smaller buildings are overlooked in favour of larger, more exciting projects. However, this would be to deny the most tangible aspects of our shared heritage; small buildings, like Bramcote Tennis Pavilion, offer us a unique and undeniable snapshot of past human experiences, of social issues, architectural fashions and day-to-day life of eras otherwise consigned to history books. Bramcote Tennis Pavilion, not only as a rare survival in the early days of lawn tennis, but with its original separate changing rooms and Tudor Revival Arts and Crafts design awards us a glimpse of late Victorian life that cannot be denied.”
This Arts and Crafts veranda-style bungalow was once a lawn tennis pavilion, among the earliest structures for the modern sport internationally. Dating back to the sport’s inception in the 1860s-1870s, it holds significance in Scarborough’s tennis history which included championship-level competitions. It was commissioned for the North of England Lawn Tennis Club from local architect John Hall. The building boasts changing rooms for both sexes, a significant social aspect of the sport demonstrating that women were playing early in the game’s history. Scarborough was an important place for tennis into the C20.
Following a failed application to demolish the pavilion for housing, the owner, Scarborough College Company, a school, invested heavily in a state-of-the-art athletics track immediately beside the pavilion. However, the pavilion, now fenced off, dilapidates, and awaits restoration, leaving its rich sporting legacy degrading despite the school’s assertion when applying for planning permission for the athletics track that the pavilion would be better appreciated by increased visitors to the grounds.
The College seems to be missing a wonderful educational opportunity for its pupils. It has in its grounds and under its care an extraordinary piece of local, national and international sporting history. For all the opportunities the building represents, the bottom line is that the badly deteriorating fabric of the pavilion needs as a matter of urgency to be addressed. The Council must take decisive action to ensure that the building is repaired.
