The Apartment is next door to the renowned Loft Theatre and the Royal Pump Rooms, now a Museum and Gallery, and across the Parade from picturesque Jephson Gardens, laid out in 1834 and named after Dr Henry Jephson, the famous physician who in early Victorian times popularised the healing qualities of the spa’s waters. The Spa Centre is a short walk away and presents a varied programme of entertainment, from sell-out professional pantomimes, plays, opera and ballet to classical and contemporary concerts. The world’s first club for Real Tennis, the ancient forerunner of modern-day tennis was founded in 1846 in Bedford Street and the game is still played there today. In 1872 two local gentlemen, Major Henry Gem and Augurio Pereira founded the first lawn tennis club in the world in Pereira’s garden behind the former Manor House Hotel (now apartments in Avenue Road.) The modern rules of lawn tennis were drawn up in 1874 at Leamington Tennis Club and the Renshaw twins, born in nearby Holly Walk, won 13 Wimbledon titles between them in the 1880s.

Numerous blue plaques record notable people and episodes in the town’s rich history, among them the tennis pioneers Gem and Pereira, boxer Randolph Turpin, American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne and artist and critic John Ruskin