This section is intended to help people locate croquet clubs in England. If you spot any errors or omissions please let me know using the feedback link at the bottom left of this page. Postcodes for club locations are always welcomed.
If you are looking for Croquet Clubs in other countries look in the Contacts and Website lists in the Contacts and Links Section.
For information concerned with managing clubs (constitutions, Health and Safety, etc. ) see the Club Management Section.
Click the link below for a list of all English clubs including non-Croquet Association ones. The list includes ONLY the locations of the clubs' lawns. To contact the people responsible for the clubs you should use the Croquet Association List of clubs. For details of non-CA clubs try searching the Federation web sites or use Google's search function. Where known, location maps are linked. The term "Map" implies the postcode has been used for the location, "Map - fine" implies that the coordinates of the lawns have been used.
***** List of Croquet Clubs *****
This only works in Internet Explorer and requires a fast (broadband) connection. This program works without the necessity of having software installed on your machine (unlike the Google solution below). The first time you run it you may get a gold bar at the top of your screen indicating that it wants to install an ActiveX control - click on the bar and allow the control to be installed and OK it at the subsequent confirmation screen (the control is the Microsoft Virtual Earth library).
Simple to use - enter your postcode and the map centres on it and map pins show your nearest clubs. Hover over a pin and futher details are displayed. You can pan and zoom. Additionally you can get a route from your home to the club!
**** Find the Nearest Club - Virtual Earth****
This requires that you have installed Google Earth™ on your broadband-connected computer. It requires a fast connection and reasonably fast computer! Google Earth is worth downloading irrespective of this offering. Download Google Earth™ from http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html.
Once you have Google Earth installed you can download the list of croquet clubs. First click "croquet.txt". You will see a new browser window starting <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>. In that browser window use File/Save As and save it as a file called croquet.kml.
Run up Google Earth™ and drag and drop the downloaded file "croquet.kml" over the map panel. After a variable delay - dependent on the connection and power of your computer - you should get a display similar to that above. Google Earth™ can struggle to cope with this number of places!
Different icons are used to define the precision of the indicated lawn location:
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Location defined by Latitude and Longitude | precise |
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Location defined by Post Code | approximate |
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Location defined by Town name | vague |
Thanks to Chris Williams for his initial start to this project.
To find the clubs near to e.g. Wakefield.
Load the KMZ file as above. Type "Wakefield, England" into the Google Earth search box (or just a postcode "OX1 3BJ" etc.) and allow the map to relocate:
click image above for larger image
Use the zoom slide (marked above) or the mouse wheel to view the nearest clubs ... then use the CA or Federation websites to get contact details.
To locate a specific Club.
Load the KMZ file as above then look under the alphabetical clubs list under the red Places banner - double click on the club name to zoom to the club.
Cross check with the Full List of Englist Clubs above if you do not find the club you want; many clubs are not named by their location - Parkstone = East Dorset Croquet Club, Southbourne = Sussex County Croquet Club.
For the Techies - a link to generate the KLM file contents from the database. Copy the text from the browser window into a text file and call it clubs.kml
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