Polo Farm Sports Club is today one of the premier centres of sporting development and achievement in the South-East. In its twentyfive-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.

		View of the clubhouse

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 Chartham Hatch Croquet Club - now renamed Canterbury Croquet Club .

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 celebrated 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!).

Recently PoloFarm has acquired the adjacent Spring Farm which eases considerably the cramped development plans as each section strives to improve its own facilities and scope. This 'breathing' space now permits a more relaxed approach to future development plans which best accommodate the future requirements of each section. In all the playing facility extends to about 50 acres and, corner to corner, extends for over half a mile, making it the largest contiguous area of playing fields in the region.

Our "Apple Pudding Gates"

The two gate piers which greet visitors to the PoloFarm Sports Club complex may often go unnoticed, merely regarded as a slight eccentricity to the modern facilities they usher within - and as "fair game" targets by visiting dray vehicles and coaches! In fact, their very existence dictated the way the club layout had to be planned initially.

The gates were the portal to a mansion which was pulled down in 1785 and they were close to sharing a similar fate as the grounds in general degenerated over the years. One of several interesting legends accompany - one is that the 'Apple Puddings' change place when the cathedral clock strikes midnight on Midsummer Eve. Nowadays that appears to happen only after one too many at the clubhouse bar!

John Finch, Lord Fordwich, a Speaker of the House of Commons lived at the mansion.

The gate piers are Listed Grade II and are recognised as having charm, beauty and architectural significance, being described by Nathaniel Lloyd in his "must have" book The History of English Brickwork (1934). He dates them as late seventeenth century.

This line drawing appears in much of the literature produced by the club <

The gates were the subject of enthusiastic and intense local restoration campaigning when the idea of Polo Farm's creation was first mooted with the purchase of the gates and grounds by Canterbury Hockey Club.

An appeal committee, chaired by Brigadier JH Slade-Powell, had representatives from the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Committee for the Protection of Rural England, The Canterbury Conservation Advisory Committee, Canterbury Hockey Club, The Canterbury Society, and the Ickham Littlebourne & Wickhambreaux Conservation Society.

The appeal raised £10,000 for the gates' restoration, including applicable grants, enabling work to commence alongside early development of the grounds and clubhouse within.

The main access to the Club now avoids the gates and sadly no longer presents a challenge to dray lorries and visiting coaches!