The time will come, sooner or later, when your club needs to invest in a new clubhouse. Replacing the old one need not be as costly as you think, as Heather Purchase discovers

Every tennis club needs a clubhouse - a place in which to shelter from the rain, to change your clothes and to have a chat with friends over a cup of tea.

Clubhouses can take many forms - anything from a small, wooden shed with little more than a kettle and a kitchen table to a large traditional brick building with a bar, jacuzzi and big screen TV. While the traditional kinds of clubhouses have many obvious advantages, the main disadvantage is their cost. Even for a moderate size building this can amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds, which is beyond the means of many clubs. That's why many of them are turning to cheaper, modular-type structures to solve their needs.

One such club is the 10-court West Herts and Watford Lawn Tennis Club, which uses the ground formerly occupied by Watford Football Club before its move to Vicarage Road. The tennis club is part of West Herts Sports Club, which also includes cricket, squash and a gym.

As tennis club chairman John Malpas explains, the 1927 wooden pavilion had seen better days. "Although it had a lot of charm, it was going down. We could still run events in it, make a cup of tea and hide out of the rain, but it was not practical. It did not give a good impression to new members. For the last five or six years of its life, it was something of an eyesore."

The present clubhouse features a well-equipped kitchen and eating area

"We sent a questionnaire to members who decided our priority was to replace the clubhouse. We also looked at how we would fu nd a project which included starting a scheme whereby people could pay for membership five or ten years up front as well as buy life membership."

The cost of a permanent brick replacement would have been a minimum of £110,000, so John and his project team started to look at cheaper alternatives.

After considerable research, they settled for a timber structure from Kent company Passmores. "We thought Passmores were really competitive in terms of price plus they had done a great job at a club in St Albans, which we had been to look at."

A member who worked for a local authority advised on the planning permission process, which in this instance was for a 'temporary structure'. "We used our expertise within the membership to work with Watford Council to gain the planning permission, which went very smoothly," adds John.

The building side of the work was led by tennis member and sports club trustee, Glen Tomlinson, a man with considerable experience of this kind of work who kept the project within budget and liaised with all the various parties involved.

The clubhouse came on the back of a lorry, cut to plan and took just over a fortnight for Passmores' workmen to erect.

Once the interior was fitted out, the result was a new and attractive wooden clubhouse with a veranda at the front, a well equipped kitchen and eating area immediately inside, a small, comfortable lounge area, a separate junior room, men's and women's changing rooms (no showers as these are available in the nearby sports club and would have cost £5,000 extra), a disabled toilet and ramp for wheelchair access, and a store room.

The 1927 building

At the same time a new Mini Tennis court and practice wall was built next to the clubhouse and more recently the courts have been reinforced with new perimeter fencing, providing better security.

The total cost of the project, completed in the summer of 2004, was £77,000, of which around £60,000 was spent on the clubhouse. The majority came from tennis club funds with the balance funded by the sports club.

"We can now easily entertain 40 to 50 people," adds John. "We feel that the new clubhouse will enable us to attract more new members, especially juniors, and to get a bigger and better coaching structure in place."

Stuart Slaughter, marketing manager of Passmores explains that while the 90-year-old company makes all manner of timber buildings from stables and garden studios to chalets and sheds, it has built at least half a dozen clubhouses for tennis clubs in the past couple of years.

"All our work is compliant with building regulations and rules regarding disabled access," Stuart says. "Our classic club houses have been popular for many years for cricket, bowls and tennis clubs. Our modular construction system caters for the great majority of individual design requirements. Sizes start at 3m x 3m (10in x 10in) and buildings can be purchased with or without a veranda. We supply the timber superstructure for erection onto foundations prepared by the customer, who can choose from a range of possible options including partitioning, thermal insulation, plasterboard lining, double glazing and tile or hot felt roofing.

"Being made of timber, they are naturally warm buildings. They're attractive looking, easy to insulate and easy to dismantle and relocate. Provided basic work is carried out, including keeping the gutters cleaned out, the door hinges oiled and overhanging branches cut away, our buildings will be maintenance-free for twenty to thirty years."