A tennis tournament was originally held at Buxton Garden's[1] as early as 1880.
[3] In 1884 the owners of the Buxton Gardens, the Buxton Improvements Company, decided to stage a fully open event featuring men's and women's singles, with ladies' and gentlemen's singles played under the title 'Championship of Derbyshire', and a ladies' doubles played with the imposing title of 'The All-England Ladies Doubles'.
[2] The inaugural ladies' singles champion was Agnes Noon Watts.
Notable winners of the men's singles included Grainger Chaytor (1892–1894, 1899), Wilberforce Eaves (1904), Laurie Doherty (1909), Adrian Quist (1936) and Franjo Kukuljević (1949).
Previous women's singles champions included Louisa Martin (1886), Blanche Bingley Hillyard (1906), Elizabeth Ryan (1921) and Gem Hoahing (1948).