In 1926, Harrogate was in the final throes of its golden era as a spa town that was the playground of the rich and famous.

With its Royal Baths, Royal Pump Room and Royal Hall, the town attracted the great and the good from Britain and beyond.

The Roaring Twenties marked the last hurrah of the town’s full-blown splendour.

Crime writer Agatha Christie chose to escape to Harrogate when she vanished in 1926, sparking an 11-day manhunt until it was discovered she had checked into the Old Swan hotel under the name Teresa Neele, the surname of her husband’s mistress.

Another lesser-known event that year also demonstrated how Harrogate was the place to enjoy the high life, regardless of what was happening elsewhere in the country. 

From May 8 to 11, the town hosted an international tennis match between Great Britain and Poland in the second round of the Europe zone of the Davis Cup, which has been tennis’ premier team event since 1900.

Remarkably, the match took place during the eight-day general strike when over a million workers downed tools. Even when Britain was brought to its knees by grinding poverty, dandies and tourists still flocked to Harrogate.

The match was played on outdoor clay courts at the back of the Royal Hall, which had opened in 1903 as the Kursaal.

Little is known about the contest, besides the fact that Great Britain won 5-0 and the Polish captain contracted a chill, as reported in the briefest of reports in Lawn Tennis and Badminton Magazine. 

The Stray Ferret therefore tried to find out more for the anniversary.

'Harrogate was the place to be seen'

Our first port of call was Gay Steel, a trustee of the Royal Hall Restoration Trust who coordinates open days at the Royal Hall.

Ms Steel sent us the main photo accompanying this article of a Davis Cup match in Harrogate but said she wasn’t certain if it was from the 1926 encounter or a subsequent David Cup match between Great Britain and Romania in Harrogate in 1938.

She said the Royal Hall had no records of the actual match, but she painted an evocative picture of what an occasion it must have been back in the days before the functional Harrogate Convention Centre altered the landscape:

To illustrate the point, Ms Steel sent us the above photo of the gardens at the back of the Royal Hall.

We contacted local tennis clubs asking if they could shed any light on the match.

Harrogate Racquets Club was established in 1924, two years before the Davis Cup match.

Club director Sarah Jackson sent us the old photo below of the club, which is based off Leeds Road and was owned by the Laycock family. Back then it had a vast number of tennis courts, compared with just four today.

“It shows how popular tennis must have been at the time of the cup event,” said Ms Jackson.

However, she could not shed any further light on the match itself.

Archive material

Online searches reveal that after beating Poland, the British team overcame Italy 3-2 in the quarter-finals, then defeated Spain 4-1 in the semi-finals before losing 5-0 to France in the zonal final.

The Lawn Tennis Association suggested we try the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, whose assistant curator Dr Clio O’Sullivan managed to locate some archive material.

The museum’s collection includes the Davis Cup medal awarded to Great Britain player Charles Kingsley in 1926. 

The medal is engraved International Lawn Tennis Championship' and 'Great Britain. C.H. Kingsley 1926'. 

The other British players were Noel Turnbull, who won a gold medal in men’s doubles at the 1920 Olympics, Gordon Crole-Rees and Patrick Wheatley. The four men never dropped a single set in the match.

Dr O’Sullivan also found a copy of a souvenir programme and pictures of the four players.

Charles Kingsley died in 1996, two months before his 97th birthday. 

Thirty years on, details of the match appear destined to be forever sketchy.

But for Harrogate to host such a prestigious event at a time when Britain was in the midst of industrial chaos serves as a reminder of the town's unique status in bygone times.