Historical Notes (1) ... can you help us ?

When six old copies of TTR, from 1947 and 1948, first came into our possession we assumed that they were copies of the official ETTA publication of the day.

We were later to discover that TTR had been an independent publication with a circulation throughout the UK (including Wales) and beyond. And from this small collection we were able to catch a brief glimpse of the development (or otherwise!) of table tennis in the UK in the 1930's and 1940's.

Between 1939 and 1945 most table tennis activities seem to have shut down. In a TTR editorial in January 1948 it was claimed that, 'we must acknowledge the fact that the war put back the clock of table tennis by a good number of years'.

Even so, in the same issue, the late H. Roy Evans was able to record that just 2 years after the war a crowd of 1200 spectators had watched the men's singles final of the Welsh Open in Cardiff on 13 Dec 1947. At that stage a strong recovery seemed to be under way ...

We plan to share some more of what we can discover about this formative period from our few magazines in several items like this one, under the general heading of Historical Notes.

But meanwhile, if anyone knows of the where-abouts of any more of these very old TTR magazines, or of the corresponding (also independent) pre-war publication Table Tennis Activity, or perhaps of any official TTAW or ETTA magazines of those days, please do let us know ... you can Email us on history@cardifftt.org.uk