Henry VIII's Tennis Court at Hampton Court Palace

Tennis, or to be precise lawn tennis, is derived from an ancient game. Once enjoyed by the masses it later became the preserve of the wealthy. We call this sport real tennis to distinguish it from the modern game and it was this that was incredibly popular at the Tudor court. Today I've come to the Royal Tennis Court at Hampton Court Palace to learn from real tennis professional and historian Leslie Ronaldson who assures me that the original is still the best. So Leslie, where did real tennis come from? Well in Western Europe there were ball games played in the fields and when the streets started to be played it moved into the streets around about the 13th century. There was ball games played in Italy and Greece which have basic origins of tennis. And can you tell us how real tennis differs from the modern game? Well as you can see it's played in a large building and you only serve from one end of the court and the rules are more complex and there is different equipment used. To start with you're not allowed to put the ball above a green line. There is a net across which is five foot of sides and three foot in the middle. Henry VIII wouldn't have had a net at all, he'd have had a line across the floor. You have to put the ball onto the side penthouse to serve and it has to land into a white square at the far end like a service box on the floor and you always serve from this end. There are three winning openings. There's the Dédan which is a big spectator gallery but Henry wouldn't have had that as a gallery either. There is the grill which he probably would have had an opening box to hit the ball into and these days we have a winning gallery which is the last of the galleries at the side which people can look through and watch through and that has bells in it and when you put the ball in there the bells ring. The slightly more difficult thing about the game is you score 15, 30, 40. It was abbreviated from 45 in about 1800 but there is a thing called chases and you could serve the entire match from the service end if a chase isn't set and a chase is when the ball bounces twice on the floor and that has always been in the rules. It's the basis of the game of tennis and there are various games of tennis around Western Europe. And how do we know that Henry VIII loved real tennis? It was mainly recorded through his gambling debts because if he lost he would claim it from the privy purse but if he won he just put it in his pocket so we actually know a bit more about his losses than we do about his wins. So you've told us that Henry occasionally lost lots of money playing tennis. Do you think people wanted to play him? We do know that a lot of the people who played Henry VIII at tennis were eventually executed coincidentally. That seemed to be a bit of a hazard of being close to Henry in general so I hope we can't blame it all on the tennis. I don't think so. And can you tell me a little bit more about the sort of clothes that they might have worn for this sport? Well certainly Henry we know stripped to his breeches and wore a fine silk shirt and felt-soled shoes so that they could move around easily. It was a very energetic game. And what other sort of shots that we might recognise on TV were played? The serve was very different and it would have been I think a slower more lobbing game getting the ball deep across a baseline. And what about the rackets and the balls? What were they using? Well we know the balls were made from animal leather and stuffed with sometimes human and sometimes animal hair. It was always played with a hand before about 1500. And what Henry VIII's period did, the Tudors, was strings started to appear in the rackets. And there was a theory that the flower sieves which were round wooden sieves, some bright spark, picked it up and put a handle on it and the ball travelled a lot faster and harder. In fact Charles V had to play against somebody here in England and he had to give him 15 because Charles was using his racket and the other guy was using a hand. And why do you think that the tennis we watch on TV today is lawn tennis rather than real tennis? The numbers of people play because I think it's a much easier game to play. You need far less equipment, you don't need a huge hall to play in. More women started to play and it became a more social game. The people who play tennis, the thousands in the world, really consider this the spiritual home of tennis. Partly because of its surroundings and because it's the oldest dedans court in the world.