Padeswood & Buckley

Padeswood & Buckley Golf Club was founded in 1933, with one of the club’s earliest meetings in December of that year at the “Cosy Café” in Buckley adopting a resolution to “put a notice in the clubhouse reminding members that the subscription of two shillings and sixpence was due on October 1st, 1933”.

Club members were happy enough with their original 9-hole course until 1970, when Caia Farm became available for purchase. The club acquired this adjacent land for around twenty thousand pounds, it then developed an additional nine holes and, by the following year, there was a new 18-hole layout in play.

There’s a great deal of industrial heritage associated with Padeswood, where several coal mining, pottery and brick making companies operated in the middle of the nineteenth century and evidence of these old commercial activities can be found when you look closely around the course.

The Ffrith branch line served the nearby collieries and oil works and the line of the old railway can still be seen to the right side of the 2nd fairway, with an old stone bridge and overgrown track visible behind the 3rd tee. The remnants of an old tramway also cross the 4th fairway.

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The course lies on gently undulating terrain, with the River Alyn bounding the layout to the south of the property. The river, along with a few associated streams and ponds, comes into play at more than half the holes on the scorecard so golfers need to have their wits about them when playing here.

Today, Padeswood & Buckley measures 6,051 yards from the back markers, playing to a par of 70. Only two of the par four holes extend more than 400 yards so the course could never be described as a slog - quite the opposite, in fact, with just the three par five holes requiring more than two shots to reach the green for most golfers.

Feature holes include the 7th (“LL”) and 15th (“RR”), playing to the same double green, along with difficult par fours at the 9th (“Alyn Bank”), where the river runs along the right of the fairway, and the 12th (“Oaks”), which was extended recently by pushing the putting surface fifteen yards back to a newly constructed three-tiered green.

The tee position at the short par three 14th (“Lakeside”) has also been changed recently so the tee shot now requires a carry over water all the way to the green. Don’t allow a stroke index of 18 for this hole fool you into thinking it’s easy because its newly enhanced aquatic challenge now dictates otherwise.