Barton-on-Sea Golf Club (Becton & Needles)

Located on the cliffs between Highcliffe and Milford-on-Sea, the 27 holes at Barton-on-Sea Golf Club offer fabulous views across the Solent to the Needles on the Isle of Wight, with three loops of nine that start and finish close to the clubhouse.

The club was formed in 1897 by a group of golfers that included Sir Robert Affleck and these founding members played on a 9-hole cliff top layout to the west of where the club is now located, next to the Barton Court Hotel.

Thirteen years later, Harry Vardon laid out the club’s second course a little further inland – somehow managing to shoehorn eighteen holes into two small parcels of land – and this layout was built by Arthur Warren, who served the club until he retired in the mid-1940s.

The “Meadows Course” remained in play until 1922, when the same architect fashioned another 9-hole track close to where the original cliff top course had been sited. It was attached to the Grand Marine Hotel, giving a certain sporting cachet to the re-furbished premises.

A decade then passed before the club’s fourth and final course took shape when forty-eight acres were leased from the adjoining Ashley Clinton estate, allowing the club to engage Harry Colt to extend the existing course (retaining only a couple of holes) and set out a new 18-hole layout.

A Bournemouth developer purchased the course and the clubhouse in 1956 but a steering committee was hastily formed to raise enough money to “buy him out” and acquire the Clinton-owned 48-acre parcel of land that was leased to the club, securing the club’s long-term future.

Worries about coastal erosion – which removed a strip of land around 80 yards wide to the eastern boundary of the property – resulted in the club obtaining additional land in the mid-1980s and this enabled John Hamilton Stutt to re-design the Colt course and expand it to a 27-hole configuration in 1992.

The Becton and Needles nines combine to form the 18-hole course of first choice, measuring 6,447 yards from the back tees and playing to a par of 72. Holes 1 to 9 on the Becton, along with holes 1 and 9 on the Needles, were installed by Stutt, with holes 2 to 8 on the Needles attributed to Colt’s design.

The pick of the holes on the Becton circuit is considered to be the 363-yard 2nd, where a lovely little stream skirts the right side of the fairway, whilst the best hole on the Needles is kept until last at the par three 9th, which is played to an island green.

The third circuit at the club is called Stroller. It’s slightly shorter in length, but with holes 4, 5 and 6 (and some of hole 7) credited to Harry Colt, Stroller is in no way inferior to the Becton and Needles loops, so we recommend playing all three nines to appreciate the Barton-on-Sea experience fully.