The Badminton Report · https://thebadmintonreport.news/features/london-badminton-clubs-st-margarets-history-155066
Inside London's 250-member badminton club machine
05.10.26, 15:54 Updated 05.10.26, 16:10
It was only during Covid when Aidan Kiernander delved deep into the history of St Margaret’s to confirm a long-held belief that it was indeed London’s oldest operational badminton club.
“We knew it was an old club and I had the chance to research it,” says St Margaret’s chair, who also runs the south London club.
As soon as the London Archives reopened after lockdown, Kiernander found the old records from the church where St. Margaret’s Fellowship for Girls played and discovered that from 1919 the school had started to order shuttlecocks and began to play competitively.
Yet for all its colourful history in south London, the club was also on the verge of folding completely during Covid. “We found that most people weren’t going to come back,” admits Kiernander.
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Rod Gilmour
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Rod has written for every UK national newspaper in a sports journalism career spanning more than 20 years. He has covered badminton for Reuters and the Daily Telegraph at a time when the Lin Dan v Lee Chong Wei rivalry was in full flow. He is also founder of The Hockey Paper and Squash Mad.