Opening June 2025, the Museum hosts a fabulous new exhibition about Tennis in Bath. Amongst a wealth of fascinating material, we’ll look at the clothing worn for playing tennis, so this piece gives a little taster.
The 1923 advert for Lux washing powder – “the bright, joyous spirit of the game seems to enter each bubble of the Lux lather” – has a lovely illustration of a tennis-playing woman. I like this because she’s clearly athletic and vigorous in her play. But there’s an awful lot of skirt here, billowing round her knees and ankles. Lux advert
The Jaeger advert for a ‘tennis coat’ (1922) shows by contrast a very demure and simpering young woman. The cost of this coat, 50 shillings (£2.50) was equivalent to £80 or £90 today – which seems a reasonable price for a coat, but in 1922 this was roughly what a skilled tradesman earned in a week, so unaffordable except to the very comfortably off. Jaeger advert
The other summer sport is, of course, cricket. The portrait photograph is Herbert Symons, in the Museum’s collection of glass plate negatives from the Leaman Studio. Herbert is wearing his cricket whites – a hand-knitted shirt of fine wool or cotton yarn, a tie cut very short, and a soft cotton or canvas hat. The hat might have come from Underwoods gents outfitters at 7 Princes Buildings, George Street, which advertised “Tennis, Cricket and Boating Coats, Shirts and Trousers” (1896). Herbert was the son of Edward Symons, Headmaster of King Edward’s School in Bath, and he and his brothers attended the school. A school cricket team had started in 1900, and this photograph is around 1905 when Herbert was about 16. I found a report in the Bath Chronicle (20 December 1906) of King Edward’s School annual prize-giving and the Headmaster’s review of the school year:
“Cricket was played with all the old interest and enthusiasm. There was at times a manifest lack of the precision and certainty which have commanded in some previous years almost unbroken success. Translation: hopeless, although the boys enjoyed running about a lot and occasionally hit the ball. Our esteemed Museum Director Stuart Burroughs also attended this school (though not in 1906, obviously).
Ann Cullis
Trustee & Friend May 2025
Sources:
National Archives Currency Converter
John Wroughton King Edward’s School at Bath 1552-1982 (published KES 2002)
Correspondence with fashion historian Jayne Shrimpton about Herbert’s clothing
All adverts from Bath Chronicle & Weekly Gazette