There was a temporary three-plank stand offering seats to 30 people, the total attendance for the final was 200, and the weather was grim. Welcome to Wimbledon 1877, the year of the first Championships. The tournament was held at the site of the All England Club's first rented premises, four acres of meadowland between Worple Road and the tracks of the London and South Western Railway in what was then the outer London suburb of Wimbledon. The champion, from an entry of 22 men - no women were permitted to play in those days - was W. Spencer Gore, aged 27.

In common with the other 21 hopefuls competing for a silver challenge cup valued at 25 guineas, Gore was not a devotee of the new sport of lawn tennis. A keen follower of cricket, Gore also played real tennis and rackets. The day of the tennis specialist was still far away.

In fact in 1877 tennis was very much an afterthought at the All England Club, which had been founded nine years earlier to promote the game of croquet. But as the new game of tennis began to overtake the more sedate croquet in the minds of a growing middle class population, it was decided to incorporate tennis courts into the club facilities.

There were, of course, strict regulations in the matter of attire. A notice on the clubhouse door advised "Gentlemen are kindly requested not to play in shirtsleeves when ladies are present." The greater physical exertions of tennis also required more than the post-croquet rinsing of hands and the enterprising Dr. Henry Jones, a committee member and general practitioner, built at his own expense a bathroom, for the use of which he charged a fee.

The weekly sporting magazine The Field, in whose London offices the All England Croquet Club had been founded in July 1868, became one of the sporting world's earliest sponsors when it publicised "a lawn tennis meeting, open to all amateurs, entrance fee £1 1s 0d" and put up the trophy. A footnote indicated that rackets and "shoes without heels" should be provided by the players themselves, though balls would be supplied by the club gardener.

Dr. Jones, who was appointed referee, did much more than introduce bathroom facilities to Worple Road. He was instrumental in drawing up the rules for the first Wimbledon. As the game had spread in popularity, following its introduction in Britain by the cavalry major, Walter Clopton Wingfield, the Marylebone Cricket Club, the controlling body not only of cricket but also real tennis, devised a set of rules for tennis. Dr. Jones and his committee revised those rules into the form in which the sport is played to this day, though players changed ends only at the conclusion of each set.

The scene of the first Wimbledon would have been more or less recognisable to present-day followers of tennis, but the equipment and style of play were, perforce, rudimentary in a new sport. The rackets resembled snowshoes in shape and weight, the balls had hand-sewn flannel outer casings and the serving was round-arm rather than overhead.

Though the tournament's opening day, Monday July 9, had been set, the event was the victim of weird scheduling. After the semi-finals on Thursday July 12 the competition was suspended to leave the London sporting scene free for the top occasion, the Eton versus Harrow cricket match at Lord's, over the next two days, with Wimbledon's first final due to be played the following Monday, July 16.

Nobody bothered to record the crowd numbers for the historic first day's play, when one of the entrants, C.F. Buller, failed to turn up, reducing the number of matches from 11 to ten. The eleven survivors were whittled down to six the following day and then to three. Since the concept of using byes only in the first round was still some years away, William Marshall received a free passage into the final while Gore beat C.G. Heathcote, an All England Club committee man.

After the weekend's excitements of the cricket at Lord's, the day of Wimbledon's final, for the first time but certainly not the last, turned out wet and was postponed - not to the next day but, in accordance with those more leisurely times, until the following Thursday.

The paid attendance of 200 for the final (at a shilling a head) again had to put up with damp and dreary weather as Gore claimed his niche in sporting history by outclassing Marshall 6-1 6-2 6-4. The one-sided match, delayed an hour by rain, lasted only 48 minutes.