Watching Tennis on Henman Hill: A Guide to the Big Screen

There is a moment on the second Wednesday, if a British player has made the quarter-finals, when several thousand people sitting on a grass slope in south-west London all stand up at once. Nobody on the bank can see a tennis court. They are watching a screen bolted to the side of a stadium a hundred metres away, and the noise they make when the point ends is audible inside that stadium, which is the strangest and best thing about the place.

The bank is the cheapest good seat at any Grand Slam. It costs nothing beyond getting through the gate, it holds more people than most outside courts, and on the right afternoon it produces an atmosphere the ticketed stands cannot match, because everyone on it chose to be there rather than paying to be there.

Where the bank sits and what the screen carries

The slope rises away from the north-east corner of the main Grounds, on the ground the club took over from the neighbouring sports club and developed as it expanded. It faces the exterior wall of No.1 Court, and it is on that wall that the large screen is mounted, angled down towards the grass.

The screen carries the host broadcast feed. In practice that means the featured match, which for most of the day is whatever is running on Centre Court, with the picture switching to No.1 Court or to a compelling match elsewhere at the producer's discretion. Commentary comes over speakers arrayed along the bank. Scores and the state of other matches appear between changeovers.

What that adds up to is a genuinely good way to watch tennis, and not a consolation for people who could not get a ticket. You get the replays, the close-ups, the challenge reviews and the commentary, none of which the crowd inside Centre Court receives. What you lose is the sound of the ball and the geometry of the court, which television flattens and which is the whole argument for being inside a stand.

The area immediately around the slope has been rebuilt more than once. The current No.1 Court opened in 1997, replacing an older court on a different site, and it gained a retractable roof and additional capacity in the redevelopment completed for the 2019 Championships. Work on that scale reorganises everything around a building, and the terracing, the paths and the planting on the bank changed with it. Descriptions written a decade or two ago do not always match what you find. The essentials — grass, slope, screen — have not.

What the rebuilds actually changed

Two things are worth separating here, because they get conflated. The screen itself has been replaced and enlarged over the years as display technology improved, which is uncontroversial and unremarked. The ground in front of it has been reshaped, which is neither.

Every expansion of the Championships site takes land from somewhere, and the open ground around the terrace is the most flexible space the club has. Successive works have moved the boundary of the usable grass, altered where the stewarding lines sit and changed which routes lead onto the slope from the main concourses. People who came for years and then had a gap frequently report that the bank feels different, and they are not imagining it.

What has stayed constant through all of it is the club's decision to keep an unticketed viewing area at the heart of a site where almost everything else is sold. That is a choice rather than an accident of geography, and it is renewed every time the Grounds are redeveloped and the space survives.

Aorangi Terrace, and the three names that got used instead

The bank's actual name is Aorangi Terrace, and almost nobody says it. The name comes from Aorangi Park, the land adjoining the Championships site that was long associated with the New Zealand Sports and Social Club, from whom the All England Club took it over as the tournament grew. Aorangi is a Māori name for the mountain known in English as Mount Cook, which is how a corner of Wimbledon ended up carrying a name from the Southern Alps.

The nicknames arrived in the 1990s and they arrived attached to people.

1. 1Aorangi TerraceThe official name, taken from the adjoining Aorangi Park and used by the club throughout.
2. 2Rusedski RidgeCoined for Greg Rusedski in the mid-1990s, when he was the higher-ranked of the two British men.
3. 3Henman HillTook over as Tim Henman reached a run of semi-finals, and stuck harder than any of the others.
4. 4Murray MoundWidely used through Andy Murray's career, though it never displaced Henman Hill in ordinary speech.

The sequence in which the nicknames came into use. The club's own name for the area has never changed.

The order matters, because the usual telling gets it wrong. Rusedski Ridge came first, or at least came at the same time, and it lost out to Henman Hill for reasons that were partly alliterative and partly to do with how far each player went. Henman's four semi-finals gave the crowd more afternoons on the bank to name it after him.

Murray Mound never fully replaced it, which is one of the odder facts about British sporting nomenclature: the player who actually won the tournament has the weaker claim on the slope than the one who did not. Both names remain in circulation, often in the same conversation, and the club uses neither in its own signage. The history of British players at the Championships, and how far each of them got, is covered in our guide to British Wimbledon champions.

Whether a ground pass is enough

It is. The bank forms part of the general Grounds and requires no additional ticket, no wristband and no booking. Anyone who is legitimately inside the Championships can walk onto it, which includes ground pass holders, show court ticket holders between matches, and debenture holders who fancy a change of scene.

This is the single most useful thing to know about a day at Wimbledon on a budget. A ground pass admits you to everything outside the three ticketed show courts, and the screen gives you the tennis on those courts as well. The scope of that pass, and what it does not cover, is set out in our guide to the Wimbledon ground pass.

The constraint is capacity rather than admission. The slope holds a large but finite number of people, and stewards manage the flow onto it, closing the access routes when it is full and releasing people in again as space appears. Being turned back at the bottom of the path on a busy afternoon is common and is not personal.

There is also no reservation, formal or informal. You cannot leave a rug to hold ground while you go and watch an outside court for two hours; unattended items get moved and, under the ordinary security rules that apply anywhere, an unattended bag is a problem rather than a place-holder. Somebody in the party stays.

When it fills, and how early to arrive

The filling pattern is driven entirely by the order of play, and it is the same every day with the amplitude changed.

Early morning is empty. The gates open before the tennis starts and the bank is a pleasant place to sit with a coffee while nothing is happening on the screen except highlights and a countdown. Through late morning it fills slowly as the outside courts start and people drift between them.

The step change comes about an hour before the show courts begin. Centre Court's first match is the fixed point of the day, and the bank is essentially full by the time it starts. On days when a British player is scheduled there, add an hour to everything — the slope will be full before the outside courts have finished their first matches, and stewards will have closed it well before the first serve on Centre.

1. 1Gates openThe slope is nearly empty. Best hour of the day to choose a spot and the only time it is quiet.
2. 2Outside courts startFilling gradually. Most people are still walking the courts rather than sitting.
3. 3An hour before CentreThe decisive window. Space is going fast and the good positions are already taken.
4. 4Centre Court first matchFull, and usually closed to new arrivals for periods. Stewards meter the paths.
5. 5Mid-afternoonSteady state. Turnover as people leave for outside courts and others take their place.
6. 6Late afternoonDay visitors start to leave and space opens again. The best value hour if you arrived late.
7. 7EveningThinner, cooler, and the screen stays on while long matches finish under the roofs.

The pattern the slope follows on a normal Championships day, driven by the order of play. Court start times vary between days and are published each evening.

Two refinements are worth knowing. The first is that the bank empties temporarily during changeovers and between matches, which is when to move up rather than when to arrive. The second is that a rain delay produces the opposite of what you would expect: the slope clears fast, but every covered space in the Grounds fills, so staying put under a waterproof often beats joining the migration. Which days across the fortnight are worth targeting for a ground pass is set out in our guide to choosing the best day to attend Wimbledon.

Choosing a spot: angle, slope and the sun

Not all of the bank is equal, and the trade-offs are consistent.

Position	View of the screen	Comfort	Best for
Bottom, centre	Best angle, looking slightly up	Steepest ground, least room	Watching properly for a whole match
Middle, centre	Very good	Reasonable slope	The default choice, and the first to go
Top, flat ground	Good, more distant	Level and easiest to sit on	Groups, picnics and long stays
Edges and fringes	Oblique, screen partly foreshortened	Usually space available	Arriving late or watching casually
Paths and terraces above	Partial	Standing only	Ten minutes of a tie-break in passing

The slope itself is the thing people underestimate. It is a real gradient, not a gentle rise, and sitting on it for three hours puts a load on one hip that a flat lawn does not. Sitting across the slope rather than facing straight down it helps. So does a rug with something under it, because grass on a bank drains downhill and the ground at the bottom is damper than the ground at the top.

Sun is the other planning variable and it moves through the afternoon. The bank faces the court wall, which means the screen is shaded and you are not. There are trees at the margins and the shade they cast is genuinely worth arriving early for on a hot day; the middle of the slope has none at all. A hat and sun cream do more for a day on the Hill than anything else you can carry.

Sitting as a group

Groups have a harder problem than individuals and should solve it differently. A party of six looking for six contiguous places on a busy slope will be walking for twenty minutes and then splitting up anyway. The flat ground at the top is the answer: it takes a spread-out group without carving a hole in the middle of the seated crowd, and it is the only part of the area where a rug of any size does not annoy somebody.

Arriving together also matters more than it sounds. Sending one person ahead to secure ground does not work, because the space cannot be held and unattended possessions are not left lying about at a major event. Six people arriving at once take six people's worth of room; one person arriving early takes one.

If the group has to split, split it deliberately rather than by accident. Two pairs a few metres apart on the same slope, watching the same screen, with an agreed meeting point for the changeover, works perfectly well. A group that spends the whole afternoon trying to reunite watches very little tennis.

The one thing that ruins a good spot

Sightlines on a slope are shallow, which means one person standing at the wrong moment blocks fifteen people behind them. During a long rally the whole bank has an unwritten agreement about this: nobody moves. Between points and at changeovers everybody moves at once. Learning that rhythm within the first ten minutes is the difference between being welcome on the bank and being spoken to.

Rugs, blankets and what you can bring onto the grass

The kit list is short because the rules are strict about furniture.

Rugs, blankets and ground sheets are permitted and are the standard equipment. Folding chairs and stools are prohibited items and will not pass the gate, for the same circulation reason that governs the paths: the slope is a route as well as a viewing area, and a chair converts it into an obstruction. This catches out people who queued overnight with camping chairs and assumed they could carry them in.

Cushions are a sensible compromise and pack down small. A waterproof layer under the rug is the item most people wish they had brought — English grass in early July holds moisture in the morning even when the sky is clear, and dew on a north-facing bank does not burn off quickly.

Everything you bring has to survive the bag rule first: one bag per person, within the published size limit, soft-sided. That is a real constraint on a group planning to sit out for six hours, and the way round it is to split the load across everybody's allowance rather than packing one large bag. The mechanics of the gate are covered in our guide to the Wimbledon bag policy and security checks.

Food and drink can come in with you, within the published limits, and the bank is where most of the picnics in the Grounds get eaten. What is permitted, including the alcohol allowance and the rules on glass, is set out in our guide to bringing food and drink into Wimbledon.

Umbrellas are a qualified yes. Small collapsible ones are permitted; large golf umbrellas are not, and on a slope they would be intolerable anyway. Expect to be asked to put one down if the screen is live.

The atmosphere during a big British match

The bank has a reputation and it earns it perhaps three or four afternoons in a fortnight. The rest of the time it is a pleasant, slightly sleepy place where people eat lunch with tennis on in the background.

What changes it is a British player on the featured court in the second week. The character of the crowd shifts within a set: people who wandered up for ten minutes stay, the standing fringe at the top thickens, and the noise starts arriving in waves that are audible from inside No.1 Court. Groans travel further than cheers. A break point produces a rising note from several thousand people who cannot see anything except a screen.

It is worth being honest that this reputation was built on losing. The bank became famous during a period when Britain had semi-finalists rather than champions, and the emotional register the crowd developed — hope, dread, hope again — belonged to that. Andy Murray's titles changed what was possible without much changing the atmosphere, because the mood on a grass bank is set by the match rather than by the record.

The crowd is also markedly better behaved than an equivalent gathering at most other sports, which surprises visitors. Silence during points is observed by people watching a television screen in the open air, which has no logic to it at all beyond the tournament's own conventions being contagious. Those conventions, and where they come from, are covered in our guide to Wimbledon crowd etiquette.

What the bank is like when no British player is involved

Most days it is not a cauldron, and knowing that saves a certain amount of disappointment. A Tuesday in the first week with two players nobody in the crowd has a stake in produces a bank that is genuinely relaxed: conversation between points, people reading, an entire family asleep on a rug halfway up.

The crowd finds its own reasons to invest. A qualifier taking a set off a seed, a marathon fifth set, a doubles pair playing better than the draw suggested — the noise arrives when the tennis earns it, and the absence of allegiance makes the bank a fairer audience than a ticketed stand. Underdogs are supported almost automatically, which is a durable feature of British sporting crowds and works in favour of whoever is behind.

There is also a specific pleasure in the second week that the schedule creates. As the singles draws thin, the featured match is more likely to be genuinely important, and the bank fills with people who came for that rather than people who wandered up. The tennis on the screen improves through the fortnight while the number of courts still playing falls, which concentrates everything.

Toilets, food and the nearest facilities

The practical geography matters when you have committed to a patch of grass for four hours.

Toilets are located around the perimeter of the area and elsewhere across the Grounds, and the queues at them follow the tennis exactly: short during play, long at the end of a set on Centre Court. Going during a match rather than after one is the whole trick, and it is why somebody in the group should always be staying with the rug.

Food outlets sit close to the bank, and the food village in that part of the Grounds is one of the larger concentrations of catering on site. The same timing logic applies. Buying at half past eleven or at half past four costs you a fraction of the queue that buying at one o'clock does.

Water refill points are provided free around the Grounds and there is usually one within a short walk of the slope. On a hot afternoon this is the most valuable infrastructure at the Championships, and a refillable bottle removes a walk you would otherwise take three times.

The big screen has no seating, no shelter and no ticket, which means the bank has none of the amenity of a stand and all of the freedom. That is the trade. If you want a seat with a back on it and a roof over your head, the answer is a show court ticket, and the differences between the courts are set out in our guide to the show courts and the outside courts.

Planning for the weather on an exposed bank

An open grass slope in an English July will give you both extremes and sometimes in the same afternoon.

Heat is the underestimated one. The Championships have run through days in the thirties, and a crowd sitting still on an open gradient with no shade over it is exactly the population that struggles. Water, a hat, sun cream applied before you sit down rather than after you have burnt, and a willingness to go and stand in the shade of the trees for twenty minutes in the middle of the afternoon. Stewards and first aid are visible around the area and will not think you are making a fuss.

Rain is the more likely one. A shower clears the bank quickly and the grass stays damp long after the sky has cleared, so a ground sheet earns its place in the bag. The screen keeps running through a delay, showing highlights and interviews, and the covered courts continue regardless, which means the bank is one of the few places in the Grounds where there is still live tennis to watch when the outside courts have stopped. How play resumes elsewhere is covered in our guide to rain delays at Wimbledon.

Cold is the one nobody packs for. The evenings at the end of June get genuinely chilly once the sun drops behind the stands, and a long match under a roof can run well past nine o'clock with a crowd on the bank still watching it. A jumper worn rather than carried costs nothing against the bag allowance.

Taking children up the slope

The bank is the most child-friendly place in the Grounds, for reasons that have nothing to do with facilities. Children can move, talk at a normal volume between points, eat when they are hungry and lie down when they are bored, none of which is comfortable in a show court seat where the row has paid a great deal to watch in silence.

The slope itself needs watching with very small children, because it is steeper than it photographs and a toddler at a run does not stop. Positioning near the top, on the flat ground, is easier than the middle of the gradient.

Buggies are subject to their own arrangements and cannot simply be parked on the bank, where they obstruct a route. Storage points exist and the stewards will direct you. The wider question of what a day at the Championships looks like with children, including what is worth attempting at what age, is covered in our guide to taking children to Wimbledon.

The screen also solves the attention problem. A child who will not sit through a whole match will watch replays, close-ups and the crowd shots quite happily, and can be taken off to an outside court for twenty minutes when the interest fades without anybody having to climb over a row of strangers to get out.

When the bank is closed, and where to go instead

Stewards close the access routes when the slope reaches capacity, and on the biggest afternoons it can stay closed for long periods. Standing at the bottom waiting for it to reopen is the least productive way to spend an hour at Wimbledon.

The outside courts are the obvious alternative and the better one. First-round doubles, junior matches, wheelchair events and the invitation draws all run on the smaller courts, and they are free-seating with a ground pass. Sitting three metres from a professional serve is an experience the bank cannot give you at any price, and the courts furthest from the main entrances are always the quietest.

Around the fringes of the terrace there are paths and raised sections where the screen is visible at an angle, and these are where the overflow ends up. The picture is foreshortened and you will be standing, but the commentary carries and the crowd noise is the same. For a tie-break it is perfectly adequate.

The other move is patience with the schedule. The bank turns over constantly, and the ten minutes after a match finishes on Centre Court is when a large block of people gets up and leaves. Being near the entrance at that moment, rather than at the back of a queue that formed an hour earlier, is how experienced visitors get on.

1. 1Outside courtsFree seating on a ground pass, and the closest you will get to professional tennis all day.
2. 2Doubles and juniorsRun on the smaller courts throughout, and are usually the emptiest good tennis on site.
3. 3Fringe viewingPaths and raised ground near the terrace give an angled view of the screen from a standing position.
4. 4Wait for the turnoverA finished match on Centre releases a block of space within minutes. Be at the access route, not in a queue.
5. 5Come back lateDay visitors leave through the late afternoon and the slope reopens with room on it.

The alternatives available inside the Grounds on a general admission ticket. Availability depends on the day's order of play.

And there is always the following afternoon. The slope is at its best late, when the crowd has thinned, the light has gone gold across the grass and a five-setter is still going on a screen that half of Wimbledon has stopped watching. More on the English tennis calendar, on grass and beyond, is collected in our tennis section and across the wider England sport hub.