This house was built by William Harry Lillywhite, the proprietor of Harry Lillywhite and Son Sporting Goods store on Jobs Lane in Southampton Village, which existed from 1895 to 2001. The Lillywhites sports legacy goes back even farther than that, and still exists today in the UK, where Lillywhites advertises itself as the “UK’s No 1 Sports Retailer.” The flagship store on Regent Street in London opened in 1925.
The original sporting here was “The Nonpareil,” cricket legend William Lillywhite (1792-1854). His descendant, F. Harry Lillywhite, was the superintendent at the Meadow Club. He arrived in Southampton at the invitation of the membership to build the club’s now famous lawn tennis courts. As featured in the Southampton Historical Museum exhibit, “Sporting Life in the Hamptons: The Lillywhite Family Collection” the Lillywhites have been at the leading edge of the development and advocacy for cricket, lawn tennis, golf, biking and baseball in America.
William Harry Lillywhite built this property in 1913. (Later, during the 1930s, the Lillywhite residence’s third floor included two bed-sit rooms that were either rented to travelers or to tennis players who had come to play The Meadow Club.) The house has been fairly recently renovated and updated; there are now 6 bedrooms, 4.5 baths in 3200 square feet, and as the listing notes, “The house has a full indoor sprinkler system allowing for the original third story to host 2 additional large bedrooms and a full bath.” The 0.62 of an acre includes a gunite pool and there’s a large garage nearby that could be made into a pool house.
Asking price for the property, repped by Lynda Packard at Douglas Elliman, is $6.45 million.
For more, click here. 121 Toylsome Lane, Southampton
(Headline note: in cricket, the person who throws the ball at the batsman is the bowler.)
