Does Britain really need 700 additional golf courses to be built by the year 2000, as proposed by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club? Anyone who plays golf knows that we do.
What is in doubt is whether all the 700 golf courses will be built in the right places. Most planning authorities are willing to give consent on redundant farmland, regardless of whether they will make good courses.
Too many speculators are buying options on farms, getting consents and then selling on, leaving it to someone else to do the real work of building the golf courses. Even then, too many newly completed courses are for sale.
The demand for more good golf courses is borne out by the waiting lists for membership of most existing golf clubs, especially in the South East, and the large sums of money which people are willing to pay for founder membership of the more exclusive private golf and country clubs now being developed.
For example, at Wisley in Surrey, 224 acres of farmland bounded by the Royal Horticultural Society’s gardens, the Pyrford Place estate, the River Wey Navigation and Wisley village are now being seeded for Britain’s only 27-hole golf course, designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr.
Ready for play in August 1991, when the new Triad-designed clubhouse will be completed, this £20m development by Marlin Estates (a joint venture of Arlington Securities and Mannai Investment Co) is being funded by the sale of a maximum of 750 membership shares. These will allow each member a limited number of guests a year.
The first issue of 100 shares in January at £26,000 each plus VAT was oversubscribed, the next 150 in May were also oversubscribed, at £31,000 each, and the next tranche of 200 shares will be offered for sale on October 1 at £37,000 each.
Other private golf clubs are being funded in more modest ways. Debentures are being sold at £5,000 each for the Wildwood Golf Club’s 18-hole course at Alfold, Surrey, which opens next year. At Belchalwell, near Blandford Forum, an offer for sale of 733 shares at £3,500 each was made earlier this year to raise £2.5m for the construction of the Mid-Dorset Golf Club.
Another way of funding new golf courses is by hotel and country club developments, often in converted mansions or farm buildings, but planning permission for housing development is the most difficult to obtain, despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that golf courses are the setting for some of the more exclusive residential areas in many parts of the world.
This is how Wentworth, St George’s Hill and Sunningdale came to be such good addresses, with their housing built around fine golf courses. This trend continues with Breckenridge Estates and Walter Lawrence Developments about to open Whinshill Court, an £8m development at Sunningdale of 12 flats, three penthouses and two detached houses at prices from £450,000.
Having sold Wentworth in 1988 to Elliott Bernerd’s Chelsfield Group and Paul Bloomfield’s Benlox for £17.7m, AMEC announced a £45m joint venture with Boddington, the former brewing group. Boddington’s subsidiary, Village Leisure Hotels, are to develop Herons Reach, a 205-acre wasteland site near Stanley Park, Blackpool, as an 18-hole golf course and a 164-bedroom hotel, with the AMEC subsidiary, Fairclough, building 368 homes at a cost of £30m. John Hall, the irrepressible chairman of Cameron Hall, has announced a 10-year plan to spend £300m on developing 700 acres of his 6,000-acre Wynyard Hall estate in Cleveland with three Tony Jacklin golf courses, two hotels, 400 acres of business parks and about 400 executive houses. Outline planning permission has already been obtained, but Cameron Hall have just appointed the Oxford Architects Partnership to redesign the golf courses and the housing.
Arlington Park is a development of 36 executive homes by Hey & Croft in 10 acres of parkland that was once part of Middleton Hall, the neighbouring Grade II listed late-Georgian house near King’s Lynn, Norfolk, in whose 86 acres of grounds there are now two nine-hole golf courses and a clubhouse that opened in March.
Hey & Croft, who recently revealed a pre-tax loss of £770,000 for the six months to April 30, were also planning to restore Middleton Hall and convert it into a hotel and conference centre, for which planning permission exists, but they have had to put the hall and the golf club on the market for sale through Humberts at £1.3m.
At Tarporley, in Cheshire, Oaklands Golf and Country Club is for sale through Humberts, acting on behalf of Grant Thornton, who have been brought in as administrators at the request of Weaver Homes, the company set up three years ago by two former employees of Charles Church, Jeremy Richardson and Andrew Richardson. The club has a new clubhouse and 300 members, with an 18-hole course designed by Tim Rouse.
From an initial turnover of £1m in 1988, rising to £4m last year, Weaver Homes were hoping for up to £10m this year, but they still have half their output of 40 houses unsold at prices from £100,000 to £250,000. However, Jeremy Griffin is optimistic that Grant Thornton will be able to keep the company afloat. Planning permission has been granted to Leading Leisure for a £10m development to create an 18-hole golf course on the 178-acre Manor Farm, at Pitt, near Winchester. Broadway Malyan are the architects for the 86-bedroom hotel and country club to be created by the conversion of a listed farmhouse and barn, but an application for 30 luxury houses to be built around the golf course was lost on appeal. Dave Thomas, who has designed the 18-hole golf course, says that work has not yet started on its construction, despite earlier reports that it would open this autumn.
Leading Leisure (where Tony Jacklin is the new director of golf) have also to make a start on 11 other golf projects, but they have announced ambitious plans to issue up to 1,000 debentures at £100,000 each, the first 100 of which will be offered for sale by the end of this year.
At Godshill on the Isle of Wight, Leading Leisure’s 160-acre Tresslewood site has planning consent for a hotel, 78 houses and an 18-hole golf course designed by Dave Thomas. The company are also expected to make a planning application soon to develop Hoddom Castle, near Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, as a hotel, with a clubhouse, golf course and housing in its grounds.
A revised planning application is about to be made for a golf course in the grounds of Seiont Manor Hotel near Carmarthen, North Wales, and there are plans for Carnoustie (where Leading Leisure own the adjoining Dalhousie Golf Club).
Hartleton House, close to the M50, near Ross on Wye, Herefordshire, is for sale at £2m through Savills with detailed planning consent for its conversion and extension as a 30-bedroom hotel, for a stone barn to be converted into a clubhouse, a 27-hole golf course to be laid out on its 240 acres and 30 holiday cottages to be built around a 17-acre lake. The Manchester-based Redrow Group’s subsidiary, St David’s Hotel, plan to develop the 250-acre Rhos y Chellis Farm near Northop, Clwyd, as a £40m golf complex with a 27-hole golf course, a 200-bedroom hotel, 48,000 sq ft of offices and 42 houses.
The new 18-hole golf course designed by J Hamilton Stutt for the Bodmin Golf and Country Club has just been completed and will be ready to play early next year.
Planning permission has been given for 50 houses around the course, and the development is currently being offered for sale through Alder King of Exeter.
Stutt designed the original parkland course at St Mellion, near Plymouth, where the second course was designed by Jack Nicklaus. Around this, Wimpey built some timeshares lodges a few years ago, but these were sold back to the owners of the golf course, Herman and Martin Bond. Now ARC Homes have built the first of 120 houses planned around the course, which are for sale through Black Horse Agencies Alder King from £185,000 for a three-bedroomed bungalow to £445,000 for a five-bedroomed house.
The biggest housing programme associated with golf developments is that being put together by Whatco, a consortium of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, Alfred McAlpine Construction and the PGA European Tour.
At Weston Hall, near Crewe in Cheshire, Whatco have planning permission for a 690-acre development with two 18-hole golf courses and 500 houses to be built by Alfred McAlpine Homes. Work will start on site later this year.
The CWS are to make a revised planning application next month for their proposed new community of 2,400 homes at Stretton Magna, on the outskirts of Leicester, which will include a golf complex and 500 golf homes to be built by McAlpine Homes. One golf project where the housing development is well advanced is that at Collingtree Park, on the outskirts of Northampton, where the 18-hole championship golf course designed by Johnny Miller is nearing completion. Developed by the Property Company of London, who are quoted on the USM, they have sold part of their 273-acre site to Prowting Homes, Bovis Homes, Wimpey Homes and Palmer Houghton, who between them are building 185 houses, 65 flats and 28 retirement homes.
The Property Company of London, whose chief executive is Graham Fisher, of International Resort Holdings, is planning three other golf projects in Britain and one in Majorca.
At Loch Lomond in Scotland, Cannon Street Investments have opened a 225-berth marina and the first of 91 timeshare lodges at their £19m Cameron House development, where the house has been converted into a 68-bedroom hotel.
Further along the loch, David Brench’s Stirling Investments are developing the Loch Lomond Golf Club, whose 18-hole championship course, designed by Tom Weiskopf, is due to open in 1991. It is being laid out on the 1,200-acre Luss estate, with a clubhouse in Rossdhu House, the former seat of the Colquhoun family.
By far the biggest residential development yet permitted in association with a golf project is Milton of Leys, near Aberdeen, where planning consent has been given for 1,250 homes by the Sherborne-based Mattar Enterprises. The showhouse is now open in the first phase of Castleton Village, whose 68 detached villas are for sale through GA Town & Country from £159,500, and former stockbroker Samir Mattar is paying £5m towards the roads and services. The golf course is not yet built.
