During London 2012, Lord's and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) were gracious hosts to Olympic archery but this week they are celebrating a significant anniversary of their own.

It was in 1814 that Thomas Lord, wine merchant, entrepreneur and cricketer had arrived at the site to lay down his turf. It was the third location he had tried to establish his ground and this one stood the test of time. Two hundred years later it is still going strong.

Lord's has welcomed cricketers from all over the world and also played host to an astonishing range of other sport. In 1844 archery had been seen on the ground for the first time. Teepees were erected on the outfield to accommodate native Americans of the Ioway tribe. Around that time, Lord's also staged pony racing, athletics and lacrosse.

No Frenchman has yet played cricket at Lord's, though in the 1820s the great Velocipide Joseph Grandserre ran round the perimeter in a two hour time trial, and in 1839 Edmond Barre from Grenoble played real tennis or jeu de paume to open the newly built tennis court.

Another French visitor to Lord's was destined to change the face of international sport. Baron Pierre de Coubertin had led the way in the revival of the Olympic Games and made it clear one sport was at the heart of his plans for the first Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.  "Cricket  - according to the laws of the Marylebone Cricket Club". In fact, the only time to date that cricket has been included was in 1900 and that was when the Olympics were in Paris.

Lord's is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year ©Philip Barker

In 1904, a letter from  Lord Kinnaird  to the MCC Committee gave notice  that the club would be "glad to see a deputation of the St Louis exhibition of about 12 in number in the pavilion". By this they meant the International Olympic Committee (IOC). St Louis staged the Games that year. Amongst those charged with making arrangements for the visit to Lord's were Lord Darnleyand and C B Fry.

Both were eminent cricketers. Darnley had been President of the MCC and, back in 1882, he had led an England team to Australia. Whilst there, he was presented with a tiny terracotta urn which in time came to symbolise Anglo-Australian cricket, for it contained the fabled "Ashes."

The IOC meetings in London coincided with the Middlesex versus South Africa tour match. On the day W G Grace welcomed them to the pavilion. Grace was the most famous cricketer of his generation and had won a 440 yards hurdles race at the 1866 National Olympian Games. It seems likely that the IOC group left Lord's before the conclusion of the match which finished in a tie.

Coubertin had made it his business to keep the major sporting bodies in England informed about his Olympic projects . A list of potential IOC members drawn up by Coubertin included Lord Harris, a noted former Kent and England cricketer who was now a towering figure in the Lord's hierarchy.

The MCC were even invited to the meeting to found the British Olympic Association (BOA) in 1905. .

After designated hosts Rome withdrew the British agreed to take on the 1908 Olympic Games at short notice. Lord Desborough, a prominent MCC member,  was also chairman of the BOA and,  in this role, he was charged with heading the Organising Committee.for the first Olympics to be held in London. 

Prominent MCC member Lord Desborough was the first chairman of the British Olympic Association and organised the 1908 Games in London ©IOC/Olympic Museum collections

The first events were held to be held at Queen's Club, where another MCC member and former England cricket captain A E Stoddart was club Secretary.

In 1908 Lord's was not amongst the  venues for the Games but MCC made its own concession to help the success of the IV Olympic Games. They "agreed to alter the date  for the MCC tennis competition to meet the convenience of Olympic supporters".

It was a  familiar Lord's personality who won the first  gold medal - Evan Baillie Noel. As a cricketer he took a remarkable 17 wickets for MCC against the gentlemen of The Netherlands but it was a rackets player that Noel enjoyed Olympic success. Competition  began on April 27 1908. He  was one of only eight competitors .and reached the semi-finals and that proved enough for gold. His opponent, Henry Leaf, scratched with an injury.

Desborough, the man who masterminded the entire Games, later became President of MCC.

War came in 1914 and the following year, Lord's became part of the war effort. Only matches involving the forces or schools were played on the ground .

When peace resumed, so did the cricket and Middlesex won the County Cricket Championship. In their team that year was one Clarence Napier Bruce. A brilliant games player, he was an MCC member and graced the club's tennis courts with great distinction. He inherited the title of Lord Aberdare and  became a long serving member of the IOC.

In the 1930s, the ground attracted huge crowds for cricket. That interest was reflected in 1934 when the BBC began broadcasting from test matches. The commentator was Howard Marshall. Later he was chosen to give the English narration on "Olympia", Leni Riefenstahl's epic film of the 1936 Games in Berlin.

Twenty years later, the Olympics opened on a cricket ground in Melbourne. It was appropriately a cricketer who declared them open, former MCC President Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh.

Lord's staged a pre-Olympic hockey tournament in 1967 but had to wait for its own Olympic debut until 2012.

The idea for staging archery at Lord's had come from the MCC in 2003. When it became clear that London was to bid for the Olympic Games, MCC President Lord Alexander and secretary Roger Knight were both keen "to give every practicable assistance in bringing the Olympics to the capital for the first time since 1948".

When they staged an archery event in 2007 the club offered some advice to spectators coming to Lord's - "MCC strongly recommends that spectators bring binoculars with them."

In perfect weather, the trophies were won by the Indian women and Great Britain's men who each beat teams from China. "I was humbled by the venue and the ambiance," said Dola Banerjee of India. "Now I know what it means to score a century at Lord's.

Lord's became an Olympic venue when it staged archery during London 2012 ©Getty Images

Preparations for the Olympics continued apace and finally, after seven years of anticipation, on morning of July 27, 2012, the day of the Opening Ceremony, the hallowed turf at Lord's became Olympic soil. The ranking round of the Archery competitions on the Nursery Ground was the first competition of the  2012 Games to take actually place in London.

Appropriately, BBC cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew was recruited to cover the archery during the Olympics.  "Everything's going on in here, the Long Room's got sofas in it, this is not Lords as we know it," he said.

The Italian men won the men's team gold thanks to a inner gold finish from Michele Frangilli, which gave his team victory over the United States by one point.

Lord's groundsmen had less than a fortnight after the Olympics to restore the outfield to its former glory before test cricket resumed and the entire outfield was replaced by the London 2012 Olympic Organising Committee that winter..

Last summer Japan became the most recent first time visitors to Lord's .The visit was in commemoration of  the 150th anniversary of the first cricket match played on  Japanese soil. But Lord's was better known most Japanese television viewers as an archery venue. Takaharu Furukawa won Olympic silver  in the men's competition at London 2012.

Philip Barker has worked as a television journalist for 25 years. He began his career with Trans World Sport, then as a reporter for Skysports News and the ITV breakfast programme. A regular Olympic pundit on BBC Radio, Sky News and Talksport, he is associate editor of the Journal of Olympic History, has lectured at the National Olympic Academy and contributed extensively to Team GB publications. His latest book, Lord's First: 200 Years of Making History at Lord's Cricket Ground, has recently been published. To follow him on Twitter click here.