The Queen's Club has been at the centre of British tennis since 1886. It has hosted every great player of every era. It is the venue where the grass court season finds its rhythm before Wimbledon, where rivalries are renewed on the same surface where they were first established, and where the sport's history is present in the architecture, the traditions, and the courts themselves. Most of that history plays out on the Andy Murray Arena, visible from the hospitality suites and accessible from the various facilities around the grounds. Some of it plays out in a room that most visitors to Queen's Club will never see.

The Real Tennis Museum is that room.

Real Tennis is the original racket sport. It predates lawn tennis by several hundred years — its origins are medieval, its rules are unlike anything in the modern game, and the Queen's Club is one of the only venues in London where an active court still exists and is still played on. The Real Tennis Museum is a private dining room for twelve guests located within the Queen's Clubhouse, positioned to overlook that court and decorated throughout with artefacts, photographs, and exhibits from the centuries-long history of the sport. It is the kind of room that generates conversation before anyone has looked at the menu — and the kind of room that guests remember long after they have forgotten what was on the plate.

The format is private dining in the most complete sense. Twelve guests, one table, one room, no strangers. The space is yours from arrival to the end of the day. A Champagne reception opens proceedings, followed by a three-course lunch served at your private table, with a complimentary bar running throughout the day that covers Champagne, Pimm's, spirits, beer, wine, and soft drinks. Takeaway drinks are permitted courtside, so the transition from lunch to tennis is as seamless as the short walk from the Clubhouse to the North Stand allows. Afternoon tea rounds out the day before the later sessions.

The Centre Court seats included with the Real Tennis Museum are in rows one and two of the North Stand, directly behind the baseline — the closest rows to the players during serve and changeover, with padded seats in the Premium tier. For a group of twelve who take their tennis seriously, this position rewards the attention. You are reading the serve before it lands, watching the footwork before it registers on the broadcast, and experiencing the game at a proximity that the sideline angle does not offer.

For any group wanting to go further into the history of what surrounds them, a Real Tennis demonstration can be arranged at an additional cost. Watching an active game of Real Tennis on a court that has existed for over a century, in the context of a day where the world's best modern players are competing on the grass courts outside, is one of those experiences that is genuinely hard to find anywhere else in sport.