It has witnessed boom times and bust and, now, Price of Bath is the UK’s last remaining tennis-ball maker. Julie Harding meets the family putting the bounce into our balls
His service was bottled lightning,’ declares narrator Jeremy Garnet of his fearsome tennis opponent Tom Chase, the navy lieutenant in P. G. Wodehouse’s novel Love Among the Chickens. ‘Only once did i take the service with the full face of the racquet, and then i seemed to be stopping a bullet.’
The ‘bullet’ flying across this imaginary tennis court in early-20th-century England was probably made in Britain. Not long after the prolific comic author reworked his book, and when genteel Britain was still enjoying spiffing tennis games on summer afternoons, Price of Bath commenced tennis-ball production at its factory in Box, Wiltshire, a few miles from the honey-coloured Georgian city from which it partly takes its name. The remainder comes from the Price family itself, its members having churned out innumerable rubber products, including car and ship parts and bouncy balls, from this tiny factory for eight decades.
Louise Price is the third generation to steer what is now the sole surviving tennis-ball factory in the western world. A relative newcomer to ball production, she arrived five years ago to launch the company’s sales on Amazon when on maternity leave from a London teaching job. she never returned to the capital, instead persuading her husband, James Rainbow, to relocate to somerset.
This story is from the May 02, 2018 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the May 02, 2018 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds