All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club are invited to become members. The patron of the club is Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and the President is The Duke of Kent. The Club was founded by six gentlemen at the offices of "The Field" on 23 July 1868 at the height of a croquet craze as the "All England Croquet Club," and held its first croquet competition in 1870. Its original ground was situated off Worple Road, Wimbledon. Croquet was very popular there until the then-infant sport of lawn tennis (a game introduced by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield a year or so prior, and originally called "Sphairistikè") was
Croquet Project architectures that have been developed for the system. Because of this, Croquet has the ability to keep running while code is modified and tested, while changes are made, an essential part of the Croquet collaborative development ability. Users can change the code running the environment while the environment runs. Croquet's time-based synchronization abilities enable real-time, identical interactions between groups of users while dramatically reducing the need for server infrastructures to support virtual world deployment. Croquet's architecture makes it easy to develop deeply collaborative applications without having to spend a lot of effort and expertise in understanding how replicated applications work.