The roots of real tennis

At the pavilion end at Lord's, close to the Museum and adjacent to a shop selling memorabilia, are the Harris Gardens. Named after Lord Harris, the Governer of the Bombay Presidency from 1890 to 1895, it resembles a site which has hosted a party last night, with tables and chairs overturned and other furniture lying around. But back in 1875, it was the arena to standardise the rules of lawn tennis. The dimensions of the garden, we are told, resemble those of the modern tennis court.

Opposite the garden is a tennis club, one of the 50-odd in the world where they still play real tennis. Real tennis is the original racquet sport. Also called jeu de paume in France, it's from which the modern game of tennis descended. It appears to be a mixture of tennis and squash. Today there are only about 50 real-tennis courts around the world – 27 in England, 13 in America, 6 in Australia, 4 in France and 3 in Ireland and the current world champion, Robert Fahey, is from Tasmania.

Lawn tennis became increasingly popular in the 1870s. In 1877, when the All England Croquet Club was in need of a new roller to maintain its lawns, a championship tennis tournament was proposed as an ideal way to raise the money. Major Walter Wingfield wrote the first rule-book in 1873. However, his court was in the shape of an hourglass and it was RA Fitzgerald, the secretary of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), who proposed a standardisation of the rules. It was then that the MCC decided to use the dimensions of the Harris Gardens for the measurements of the courts.