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 (depending on whether sticks were used), was regularly played in France and southern Britain between villages or parishes; it was attested in Cornwall as early as 1283. In the book "Queen of Games: The History of Croquet", Nicky Smith presents two theories of the origin of the modern game of croquet, which took England by storm in the 1860s and then spread overseas. The first explanation is that the ancestral game was introduced to Britain from France during the 1630–1685 reign of Charles II of England, and was played under the name of ' (among other spellings, today usually "pall-mall"),