At one time there were as many as seven different croquet clubs in Bath!
Bath’s first national tournament was held in September 1896 with eight lawns laid out at the Lansdown Cricket Ground in Combe Park Road. Rev Arthur Law, the vicar of Dauntsey and a leading player since the 1860s, was central to this first tournament and remained a key figure in organising the Bath tournament until the first world war. The location of Bath’s annual tournament was moved to the Recreation Ground in 1898 and open tournaments took place there each year until 1938.
The Bath Tournament was organised by the Bath & County Croquet Club. Captain Vaughan Jenkins was the Club’s leading player and Chairman throughout its heyday in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The Vaughan Jenkins family kindly left his croquet records to the Club which included his personal croquet memorabilia as well as Club records.
The Bath & County Club closed in 1947, at that time Bath’s last croquet club, due to a lack of members until Bath Croquet Club was re-formed in 1976.
So we are now enjoying our 50th year at our home on the Rec. For the first 20 years our lawns sloped away to the South, until we terraced them in the mid-90s, and for the first 40 or so years we made do with one of the four huts – the “kitchen hut”- as a place to gather around a kettle and have coffee. The ‘facilities’ were in the back of the old bowls pavilion, which our landlord let to Bath Drama for set storage and rehearsal space, and our show lawn had originally been constructed for playing bowls; nice and flat, very well drained (because it had a clinker base) but very susceptible to drought. The pavilion was reclaimed by the Rec Trust in 2018 and converted to the very nice Clubhouse which we now enjoy.
Our playing membership has increased steadily in number over the years and appears to have levelled off at around 80-90. Around 25% of these play mainly Association Croquet, while the majority of new members choose to play Golf Croquet. For the past eight years we have kept some of our lawns open during the winter months, and at least half of our members play all the year round, weather permitting.
65 of our members – past and present – met on Sunday 17th May 2026 to celebrate our 50th Anniversary with croquet games, and a splendid buffet. On the day almost all of them chose to wear our new skyblue sports shirts, which we hope team members will continue to wear for matches.
