Enville Golf Club is set on the edge of the Black Country, five miles to the northwest of Stourbridge. The location is bucolic and once formed part of Enville Hall Estate, the ancestral home of the Earls of Stamford and Warrington.
Enville Golf Club was established in 1935 by a group of golfers from Stourbrige and Churchill & Blakedown Golf Clubs who wanted a course of their own. Sir John Grey agreed to lease the land (known as Enville Common) on which the first course was laid out. Alf Padgham – 1936 Open Champion – was consulted on the design and the fledgling golf club was underway with its first 9-hole layout, which was built by construction foreman Arthur Wrigglesworth.
Although Wrigglesworth had never played golf, he became Enville’s first professional and over the next five years he laid out five new holes until his untimely death in 1940. Horace Lewis then took over as club professional and subsequently brought the hole total up to eighteen.
In 1972, Frank Pennink added another nine holes to the club’s portfolio, and by 1983 a further nine was added by Ron Hinton, Enville Golf Club's long-standing club professional since 1955.
In 1985, the club produced a booklet titled The First Fifty Years. “During the construction of the third nine holes in the woodland, three stones (erected to commemorate the replanting of trees to replace those hewn down to smelt iron-ore in the furnaces along the River Stour) were re-sited near the 16th tee of the present Highgate course.”
“The final nine holes, constructed in the Lodge Plantation, were brought into use on Captain’s day in 1983 and the 36 holes were reorganised into two courses of 18 holes each, identified as The Highgate Course and The Lodge Course respectively.”
The architectural provenance of both courses is rather complicated, as each of Enville’s courses comprise of some holes designed by Alf Padgham, Arthur Wrigglesworth, Horace Lewis and Frank Pennink.
Ron Hinton laid out 9 holes (4-12 on today’s Lodge course) within the Lodge Plantation on the other side of Enville Common Road, so the provenance of these holes is clear.
Muddled architectural origin aside, the slightly shorter Lodge course is generally considered to be the Highgate’s understudy, but frankly there is very little to choose between the two. Both courses have a split heathland and forest personality and both play across near perfect sandy golfing terrain.
The Lodge starts rather unusually with a short but pretty heather-clad par three and it’s followed by two short heathland par fours. You then cross Enville Common Road and you’re transported into Ron Hinton’s ethereal forest.
After a gentle start the long two-shot 4th immediately grabs attention, where the approach must carry a vast ravine en route to a greensite that falls away sharply at the front and left side. The short par four 5th is followed by a brutal par four where the ease of the tee shot belies the difficulty of the switchback fairway ahead and the raised green complex.
A run of solid holes follow, where the ground movement makes for thrilling golf, before you cross back over the road and return to the heath to play the long par four 14th. Heading for home, playing one lovely heathery hole after another, many golfers will wonder why Enville isn’t better known and more highly regarded.
Only a few English clubs have thirty-six holes, fewer still might reasonably contemplate the idea that both their courses are candidates for inclusion in the national Top 100. With future vision and some dusting off, The Lodge and The Highgate courses are genuine England Top 100 contenders.
