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Wallblake House
Babolat Pure Strike 98 18×20 4th Gen Tennis Racquet: Start with the date, because for once the date is documented rather than estimated: 1787, taken from an inscribed brick in the northern kitchen wing. Built by Will Blake, a sugar planter, and it is the oldest standing structure on Anguilla. Now the materials, which is where the money actually goes. Dressed local stone. Lime mortar made from burnt coral and shell mixed with molasses and marl. A roof of Guyanese hardwood. Everything sourced within walking distance of the beach except the timber, which came a very long way, and imported timber is always the line item that hurts. Then, in 1796, a total write-off: the property was gutted during the French raid on Anguilla led by Victor Hugues, an attack the islanders ultimately repelled. Restoration ran seven years, as one of ten designated heritage houses, completed in 2004. Seven years, which I would wager is several more than anyone put in the estimate. It now serves as the Catholic rectory and is opened for tours, so it earns its keep. Built 1787, still on the books as a working asset. Show me a better return.
Beautiful weather today over The Valley — a tragedy, frankly, but stay with me, because something always comes off the Atlantic eventually, and when it does you will want the Babolat Pure Strike 98 18×20 4th Gen Tennis Racquet already in your hand.
Ninety-eight square inches of head on a 305 gram unstrung frame, balanced seven points head-light, swinging with a swingweight of 332: that is ballast, friends, real ballast, the kind of mass that holds its line when a heavy hitter — or a forty-knot gust — starts leaning on your side of the court.
The 18×20 is the dense pattern, its twenty crosses packed tighter still by FSI Control spacing, and dense is exactly what you want when conditions deteriorate: a low, flat, pinned-down trajectory that stays under the wind instead of sailing off with it. String it anywhere from 48 to 57 pounds.
The hybrid 21-23-21 millimetre beam bolts square-section stability onto elliptical speed, NF2-Tech flax fibres in the shaft keep the feedback honest, and the head carries no dampening at all — because when the front finally rolls in, you want to feel everything.
It holds its line everywhere from a flat calm sunrise hit on Crocus Hill to a forty-knot squall coming straight off the Atlantic, and while you are up on that hill — footnote — the Old Court House basement is also perfect for sitting one out.
And what a proving ground they've assigned it. Anguilla has been stress-testing architecture since 1750: the Old Court House on Crocus Hill was wrecked by hurricane in 1955, battered again in 1960, and survives today chiefly as the walls of its basement jail cells — magnificent.
Wallblake House, 1787, mortared with burnt coral, shell and molasses, is still standing, which tells you the islanders learned to build the way this racquet is built: over-braced and unbothered. Even St Gerard's church went storm-literate, with open side walls for through-ventilation and a ceiling shaped like an upturned boat hull.
Take the tour now, while the barometer is still lying to everyone.
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