Polo Farm Sports Club is today one of the premier centres of sporting development and achievement in the South-East. In its twenty-plus years existence it has seen its facilities quite literally emerge from a derelict orchard to something its membership and the local and regional sporting community can be justly proud. It is situated in its own grounds about two miles to the east of Canterbury (Click here for directions.)

Who, What ... Why

The Club is composed of three main sports sections with individual histories going back very much further - The Canterbury Cricket Club (until very recently Beverley Cricket Club), The Canterbury Lawn Tennis Club, and Canterbury Hockey Club. More recently joining these are our friends from Canterbury Croquet Club (formerly Chartham Hatch CC).

Canterbury Hockey Club has associate sections in The Canterbury Ladies Hockey Club, and the Canterbury Junior Hockey Club. The Canterbury Hockey Club, formed in 1901, recently celebrared its centenary.

It was the hockey section's need to move from its previous site at Kingsmead for better pitches and facilities that first led to the search for a new ground. And it was in the spring of 1977 that clubman Dick Laslett and his brother Bill bought the overgrown orchard at Polo Farm that started everything off. The site's development is chronicled elsewhere - suffice to say that by the end of 1981 matches had been played at the new grounds and celebrated at the new clubhouse!

The hockey club had been joined at these earliest stages by the-then Beverley Cricket Club who themselves were looking for their own "home" pitches, and a little afterwards by Canterbury Lawn Tennis Club, who felt they could benefit from a move from their cramped but valuable town site.

Beverley CC has come to end of an era - after a tradition almost as long as the game actually - by recently changing its name to Canterbury Cricket Club. It was formed in 1835 and is one of the oldest cricket clubs in the country. (It's not true that some of the original team is still playing ... but it is true the Archeological Trust only scratched the surface trying to find the long-lost trophy cabinet ... who'd bury it empty!)