By Spencer Vignes at Wimbledon

It’s not often you meet a Wimbledon champion while out walking along the Dorset clifftops or waiting to be served at the local butchers. Wimbledon champions live in splendour in Chelsea, or Monte Carlo, or Miami, safely ensconced behind high walls and protected by security cameras.

At least they do now. But things were different back in the 1930s when Maud Watson, the first woman ever to win the ladies’ singles title at Wimbledon in 1884, surprised the residents of Charmouth by moving to their small coastal village. Even in the pre-television age when celebrity was a yet-to-be invented word, pretty much everyone in the country knew who Watson was. The finest tennis player of her generation and a First World War heroine to boot, awarded the MBE for her services as commandant of the Berkswell Auxiliary Hospital for wounded soldiers in Warwickshire. Imagine Martina Navratilova or Steffi Graf coming to live in Bridport or Winterbourne Abbas. That kind of thing just wouldn’t happen.

Well in 1932, it did.

Watson was born in 1864 in Harrow on the outskirts of London. She grew up in Warwickshire, spending hour after hour hitting tennis balls against a wall in the back garden. It’s said her game had no weaknesses. Cool and quiet on court at a time when players were often loud and excitable, Watson was also the first women to serve over-arm which gave her an advantage over opponents who still used the under-arm action. When Wimbledon bosses finally bowed to player and public pressure to stage a ladies’ singles event alongside the men’s singles competition launched in 1877, she was the automatic favourite.

Needless to say Watson, then 19, reached the final where of all people she ended up playing her sister Lilian, recovering from a set down to win 6-8 6-3 6-3. The following year she retained her Wimbledon singles title, defeating Blanche Bingley 6-1 7-5 in the final.

“She was a pioneer, she really was, not just in tennis but in sport in general,” says Alan Little of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum. “Her name will be in the history books forever as the first woman ever to win the ladies’ singles title here. There are many worthy champions on that list from over the years, some of the all-time greats of the game, but her name will always be at the top.”

Watson entered and won just about every tournament that there was to play during the 1880s, falling in love with south-west England in the process after competing regularly in the annual events staged at Exmouth, Teignmouth and Torquay. Her love of the coast would, however, almost cost her dear. In 1889, while on holiday in Jersey, she almost drowned while swimming in the sea and suffered respiratory problems for a number of years afterwards, forcing her premature retirement from the game.

Watson’s love for tennis never diminished though. She returned to Wimbledon many times over the subsequent years as a spectator, being presented with a commemorative medal on the Centre Court in 1926 by King George V in recognition of her services to the game and the tournament. Six years later she moved to Charmouth, purchasing a house in Hammonds Mead, where she lived for the rest of her life. By a twist of fate May Langrishe, one of her great adversaries on the tennis circuit, had also by that time moved to the village of Morcombelake between Charmouth and Bridport. The pair met regularly and when Langrishe fell ill in 1938 it was Watson who cared for her during the final months of her life.

Watson herself passed away in Charmouth on 5 June 1946. Almost 70 years on, and 131 years after that first title at the All England Club, her achievements are still celebrated at Wimbledon’s Lawn Tennis Museum where visitors can learn all about the woman who helped change the face of tennis and made Dorset her home.