John Lockyer, Course and Grounds Manager at the prestigious Roehampton Club approached Shelton Sportsturf Drainage Ltd in December 2012 to help him to solve the historic drainage problems of croquet lawn one. John explained, ‘Lawn one sits the lowest out of three neighbouring lawns with rainfall moving onto it from the higher lawns two and three. There was no natural or man-made drainage outfall for lawn one and the soil type is a heavy clay loam with limited natural drainage performance. Historically, Lawn one was closed for much of the winter months owing to this problem. The croquet section is thriving and we keep the lawns open throughout the year so losing a lawn for long periods of time to wet weather was a real bind for our players.’

After a period of consultation and a site visit by Mick Claxton, Director of Shelton’s Sportsturf Drainage Ltd it was decided that the best course of action was the installation of Shelton’s bespoke Lightning Drain™ system on lawn one and partial installation on lawn two which was installed in October 2013. The Lightning Drain™ technique involves the digging of 35mm wide trenches and the installation of a 25mm perforated land drainage pipe prior to backfilling with Lytag® in a one pass operation. ‘The work took just 3 days to carry out and we never believed that the results would be so impressive.’

However, John had to wait until the recent heavy rainfall to understand just how effective this drainage installation had been. ‘The difference between Croquet lawn one and its neighbour is like night and day. We couldn’t believe just how effectively the rainwater drained from lawn one. It has gone from being a lake to puddle-free, all under truly atrocious conditions this winter.’

In fact, so impressed are Roehampton Club’s Board of Directors and Croquet Committee with the results on lawn one that they have approved the installation of Lightning Drain™ completely on lawn four and partially on lawn three for October 2014.

Of the work at Roehampton Club, Mick Claxton, Director of Shelton Sportsturf Drainage Ltd, said ‘We are delighted with the results that our Lightning Drain™ system has created for John and his team at Roehampton Club and we hope that come winter 2014 the croquet players can enjoy all year round, uninterrupted play.’