Piltdown Golf Club

The sleepy hamlets of Piltdown in East Sussex became famous the world over in 1912 when amateur archaeologist, Charles Dawson, claimed to have found a 500,000-year-old skull, which proved the missing link between ape and man. Forty years later, it was established that the skull was an ingenious combination of a human cranium and an ape’s jaw.

Piltdown Golf Club was established in 1904, long before the Piltdown Man hoax was finally exposed. The club’s origins started with a German aristocrat, Count Alexander Münster, who wanted a course to rival Royal Ashdown Forest so he could tempt his visiting golfing friends and relatives to stay and play locally rather than heading to the seaside links.

“Royal Ashdown’s Professional, Jack Rowe, was engaged to lay out an 18-hole course for a fee of one pound plus expenses,” wrote Mike Berners Price in The Centurions of Golf. Farmer George Varnum, a tenant of Count Alexander Münster, who lived on the edge of the common, was employed to do the groundwork. “JH Taylor advised on early changes to Rowe’s layout,” continues Berners Price, “and the course now has no bunkers although they did feature in the original design. Despite the name, the club is not situated on downland.”

Piltdown was also featured in Frank Pennink's Choice of Golf Courses and the author commented that the course was: "Re-designed by G.M. Dodd in 1927... One of the most charming club's in the writer's experience, with a natural, bunkerless course."

Just like its neighbour on the other side of Ashdown Forest, Piltdown Golf Club is bunkerless, and the absence of sand traps somehow plays trickery with distances – ranges look longer than they really are. Today’s course measures only 6,055 yards from the back tees, so it’s not long on paper by modern standards. However, with six par fours measuring more than 400 yards and a lowly par of 68 (there’s only one par five at #2 for men), Piltdown is absolutely no pushover.

The 3rd hole is case in point and a brutal par four for men (par five for the ladies), which measures 453 yards from the tips. The hole doglegs right around the fisherman’s paradise known as Piltdown Pond and requires an accurate drive to the elbow, which will leave a long uphill approach over a swathe of heather, and a watery ditch, to a back to front sloping green. If you can mark a par on the card here, it will feel like a birdie.

There’s no letup at the 202-yard one-shot 4th which is played downhill over a ravine and two bands of tangly heather. It’s an intimidating par three that focuses the mind very early in the round. By contrast, the 149-yard par three 7th is a pretty little one shotter which requires an accurate shot to avoid a deep hollow fronting the right side of the green. According to legend, the hollow is thought to have been a burial pit for plague victims.

Gullies, heather-covered banks, grassy swales and dense swathes of heather (not to mention plenty of arboreal trouble) all combine to make a round at Piltdown very agreeable indeed. In fact Piltdown really is golf au naturel.

What’s more, Piltdown Golf Club is not resting on its laurels, but is investing heavily in the future. In recent years, more than half a million pounds has been spent on redesigning and rebuilding the greens. For example, the greensites on a trio of holes (9th to the 11th) have been altered dramatically to make a fabulous little test around the turn. The club is also working closely with Natural England to remove copses of trees in order to return the course to its heathland origins.

We’re confident therefore that this delightful centurion will remain an engaging golfing encounter for another 100 years.