The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, the private members' club in Wimbledon, south-west London, that hosts The Championships, Wimbledon.
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, usually called the All England Club or AELTC, is best known as the home of The Championships, Wimbledon, held every year from late June to mid-July. Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam still played on grass and attracts around 450,000 visitors. The club is a private company limited by guarantee. Its grounds on Church Road, Wimbledon, SW19, include 18 tournament grass courts, eight American clay courts, six indoor courts, and 22 grass practice courts at nearby Aorangi Park, commonly called Henman Hill. Centre Court seats 15,000 and has a retractable roof, completed in 2009. The grounds also house the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum.
The club was founded on 23 July 1868 by six gentlemen as the All England Croquet Club during a croquet craze. Lawn tennis arrived in 1875, and the first gentlemen's singles championship was held in 1877. The club moved to its present Church Road site in 1922. It hosted tennis at the 1908 and 2012 Olympics. The Wikipedia entry says 90 per cent of the Championships' financial surplus goes towards developing tennis in Great Britain, which is a clear purpose for a club that could simply be a private venue. We did not find a first-party mission statement, because the club's About page returned no readable text.
The AELTC is in Wimbledon in south-west London, near the Lawn Tennis Association's National Tennis Centre. The Championships are run by a Committee of Management with 12 club members and seven LTA nominees. The page names Debbie Jevans as chair of the board, the first woman in the role since July 2023, with Richard Atkinson as interim chief executive. These details are from a secondary source and leadership may have changed. The Princess of Wales is the club's patron and took over the presidency from the Duke of Kent in 2021.
Wikipedia notes the club's history of exclusion: it records that Black players were barred until 1951 and Jewish players until 1952, and that a former champion, Angela Buxton, said she was excluded, which the club disputes. Since then, equal prize money for men and women started in 2007, and the Wikipedia entry also describes a membership of 565 as at 2017, with membership by invitation and sponsorship by existing members. We could not find anything first-party on staff culture, so we have not described it.
Running Wimbledon calls on a very wide range of skills. There are grounds and horticulture teams who look after the courts, event, ticketing and hospitality teams, broadcast and media staff, security and logistics, finance and legal teams, and community and charity staff working with tennis development. Much of the work is seasonal around the two weeks of the Championships, though the club operates all year. If you like events, outdoor work, sport or business, the All England Club is a famous example of how those skills fit together. Check wimbledon.com for current opportunities.
Website: www.wimbledon.com
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