Minchinhampton (Old)

One of only a few English clubs to boast three full length 18-hole courses, the Old course occupies a separate site on Minchinhampton Common to the west of the town, while the other two layouts are located between the villages of Avening and Cherington to southeast of Minchinhampton town.

Both the Avening and Cherington courses are an amalgam of a mid-1970s 18-hole F.W. Hawtree layout to which Martin Hawtree (F.W’s son), added a further 18 holes in 1995. The Old course is of an entirely different vintage, dating back to 1889. It’s one of the West Country’s earliest clubs, laid out by kindly Nature with a little help from a St Andrews clubmaker called Robert Black "Buff" Wilson.

Sean Arble commented as follows: “The bunker free Old Course has very little fairway shaping; iron age fortifications, quarries, Kingtonesque earthworks around some of the greens and the ever present wind are all Minch Old needs to defend itself. Despite the lack of fairway shaping, there is no question the designers knew what they were doing as the angles presented bear the hallmarks of strategic golf. It should be noted that Horace Hutchinson thought enough of Minch Old to include it in his British Golf Links, a highly recommend book.

Despite the clever subtleties of the design, my favourite aspect of Minchinhampton is its true common nature. Minch Old circles in a wide arc around the 580-acre common and through the remains of an Iron Age fort. There is a long tradition of golf on common land in England, but Minchinhampton feels unique to me. The course crosses several roads while sharing the land with walkers, horse riders, children at play, cows and horses. Minch Old was the first time I have had the pleasure to experience a true common golf scene as one might have found 120 years ago.

There are open views in every direction, but many of the holes have a strangely semi-blind nature from the tee. Usually this is due to a slight rise in the fairway, but there is also a lack of elements such as shaping, bunkers or trees to act as a guide or help with estimating distance.”

Tom Doak made a point of playing Minchinhampton (Old) in 2017 and awarded the course a rating of six out of ten. He commented as follows in his Christmas 2017 Confidential Guide update:

“A cousin in spirit to Cleeve Cloud, Minchinhampton is also laid out across an open commons on a high hilltop, though not as dramatically: the hilltop is flatter, and here you don’t have to play your way up to it and back down. There are no bunkers at all, and in months when cows and sheep graze the roughs, you can get away with murder off the tee. However on many holes, starting with the long opener, rugged hollows from old quarry works guard the greens tightly, so that missing wide will often get you in deep trouble. The short holes are especially memorable – three of them play across ancient quarry works full of little grassy moguls that come up quite close to the greens.

The stretch from the 8th to the 11th is the best on the course, but my most memorable shot of the day was my second to the 12th, which I had to hit over the top of a half-dozen cows laying in the rough. I found the setting as charming as St. Andrews or North Berwick; I wish I lived in a little hamlet like this where you could just go out and play whenever you felt like it.”

Undoubtedly the Avening and Cherington courses are what most modern golfers would expect a normal golf course to look like – solid tests, well defined and nicely maintained. Golfers share the Old course with walkers, horses and cattle, so conditioning is questionable. However, if you want to experience something different, the Old course will deliver in spades. Even Henry Cotton thought so. He considered the drop-shot 8th to be one of the best par threes in England.