Griselda for tennis courts

In the 1920s and 1930s many of the original grass courts in the parks were converted to hard courts, and as provision for tennis increased, new courts were created with hard surfaces. They were often described as Griselda courts by A.A Pettigrew.[1]

Griselda was the proprietary name for a form of gravel widely used at that time to surface tennis courts. An advertisement in 1933 stated that "En-Tout-Cas", makers of golf courses, aerodromes, tennis courts, gardens, recreation grounds, squash courts &c. based at Leicester, were the sole distributers of Griselda surfacing and the makers of the "noted Griselda hard tennis courts".

The advertisement continued: "This court has been tested for 5 years and is a low priced semi-resilient Court with a surface which is to all intents and purposes a NO-UPKEEP court."[2]

The SAPCA (Sports and Play Construction Association) Code of Practice for the Construction and Maintenance of Tennis Courts", 2018,[3] mentions Griselda as follows: Other similar water-bound surfaces may still exist in small numbers. Courts made from crushed rock of UK origin are the most common and have proprietary names such as “Griselda”, “Dri-pla” and “Red-gra”.

Sources of Information

  1. A. A. Pettigrew, The Public Parks and Recreation Grounds of Cardiff, Volume 4, Chapter on Tennis
  2. The Tatler Wednesday 25th January 1933 page 39
  3. SAPCA Code fof Practice or the Construction and Maintenance of Tennis Courts" 2018 Section 3.5.11.4 Other water-bound surfaces