Oswestry

In 1903, founding members of Oswestry Golf Club played on a 9-hole layout on the top of Llanymynech Hill. In the late 1920s, problems with the lease and the remoteness of the course from Oswestry saw the club move to the grounds of Aston Hall, where James Braid was called in to set out a new course.

According to the architect’s site visit report in “James Braid and his Four Hundred Golf Courses” by John F. Moreton and Iain Cumming, he had “pleasure in stating that a really high class course can be constructed. The site is nicely undulating… the land is light loam and sand appears to be nearly all over, within a foot or two of the surface”. Braid then proceeded to map out the course, hole by hole, noting where bunkers should be placed and where trees should be either trimmed or cut down.

The book then goes on to say: “Play began in June 1931. The course measured 6,040 yards, and apart from the moving of the 2nd tee, is virtually unchanged in yardage and layout, as confirmed by the club’s 1950s handbook and today’s card. Braid could return and be immediately at home, viewing his course and the Welsh hills in the distance.”

The course is blessed with a fine set of par three holes, measuring between 124 yards at the uphill 4th and 181 yards at the 12th, where the green is protected by an oak tree on the right and an old cart track to the front of the putting surface. The short par fours at holes 7 and 11 are also worthy of mention, with the former doglegging slightly left to the green and the latter playing to a small raised putting surface.