Armed police and roadblocks will form a ring of steel around Wimbledon next month in the biggest security crackdown in the Championships’ 140-year history, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

The terrorist atrocities to strike London, Manchester and other major cities in the past year have prompted the All England Club and Metropolitan Police to take unprecedented steps to prevent the biggest event in tennis falling victim to a suicide bomber or vehicle attack.

The London 2017 athletics event will witness a similar lockdown, while golf’s Open Championship, the British Grand Prix and Royal Ascot will also be subject to higher-than-ever security during the country’s biggest sporting summer since the 2012 Olympics.

For the first time at Wimbledon, checkpoints will be stationed on the roads surrounding the grounds to restrict vehicle access, with a “dedicated deployment” of armed officers also on duty during the Championships.

The proximity of roads to the gates through which half a million spectators are expected to flood between July 3-16 makes the Championships especially vulnerable to the kind of attacks to strike London Bridge on Saturday night, Westminster Bridge barely two months earlier and the likes of Nice, Berlin and Stockholm in the last year.