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Among the most popular You & Yesterday features are sporting articles and our 'Stories Behind the Pictures' pieces - here Peter Seddon combines the two by revealing how a photograph of French tennis star Amelie Mauresmo is directly linked to Derbyshire.

The above photograph shows a young-looking Amelie Mauresmo holding aloft the Girls' Singles Championship Cup at Wimbledon in 1996 - the French star born on 5 July 1979 was then just seventeen.

Most who have lifted that Junior trophy never make the leap to sustained success in senior tennis, but Amelie Mauresmo did. The very popular player attained the coveted ranking of World Number One in September 2004, and in 2006 won the Ladies Singles' events at both Wimbledon and the Australian Open.

But what possible link could the photograph above have with Derbyshire? To divine the answer it is necessary to think not of Mauresmo herself but of what she is holding - namely the trophy.

For each year's winner of the cup since Junior Wimbledon was inaugurated in 1947 would - if they cared to scrutinise it - see that the reverse of the trophy is inscribed in a rather curious way.

The inscription reads:

'CHALLENGE CUP PRESENTED BY THE DIRECTORS OF THE BUXTON GARDEN COMPANY LTD.'

Here is the explanation for what appears to be an incongruous message.

When lawn tennis was still a young sport in the 1880s one of the most prestigious tournaments in the season's calendar was held in the delightful setting of the Pavilion Gardens at Buxton, Derbyshire. The annual tournament there was run under the auspices of the aforesaid 'Buxton Garden Company'.

The Girls Singles trophy now awarded each year at Wimbledon was in fact originally one of an identical pair of cups presented at Buxton to the winners of the All England Ladies Doubles Championship, a title originally created by the Buxton committee in 1884.

The cup was donated to the Wimbledon committee in 1945 by the family of Miss Bertha Steedman, a prominent tennis player in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Miss Steedman was ranked 8 in the world in 1898, 1899 and 1902, and in 1895, in partnership with Blanche Hillyard, won the All England Ladies Doubles title at Buxton for the third time in succession.

In deference to that achievement the trophies were 'retired' and given in perpetuity to Miss Steedman and Miss Hillyard. It was after Miss Steedman's death that her own particular trophy was donated to Wimbledon - and the committee in turn decided to use it for the newly-inaugurated Junior Girls tournament.

Which is how Amelie Mauresmo comes to be holding aloft a Wimbledon trophy inscribed with the name of the Derbyshire town of Buxton.

Among the other better-known winners over the years have been Ann Haydon (1956 - later Ann Haydon-Jones), Tracy Austin (1978) and Martina Hingis (1994).

Nor is this the only link between Buxton and Wimbledon, for when the Ladies Doubles tournament was inaugurated at Buxton in 1884 it was the first sporting contest anywhere to be designated an 'All England Championship'.

Wimbledon, which had begun their own competition in 1877, rather liked the turn of phrase, and when the Wimbledon Championships began to assume a certain supremacy, the committee struck a deal with their Buxton counterparts to appropriate the name 'All England Championships' for their own use. Wimbledon uses the designation to this day.

And one final link - since 2001 Buxton Mineral Water has been the official mineral water of the Wimbledon tournament!

Understated though this hat-trick of links may be, it is more than fitting that the name of Buxton remains associated with the world's most prestigious lawn tennis tournament - it is a tacit reminder that the attractive Derbyshire town once held a pioneering position in the burgeoning world of competitive tennis which has since become such a global phenomenon.

• Amelie Mauresmo - A Curious Tennis Connection
• Anyone For Tennis?

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County:  Derbyshire

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