Fifteen years after it was founded, Ulverston Golf Club moved near to the little village of Bardsea in 1910 so golfers have now been playing on the same wooded parkland site for over a century.
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Fifteen years after it was founded, Ulverston Golf Club moved near to the little village of Bardsea in 1910 so golfers have now been playing on the same wooded parkland site for over a century.
Ulverston
Ulverston lies on the Furness peninsula, to the south of the Lake District National Park, where Ulverston Golf Club was founded in 1895. Fifteen years later, the club moved to the village of Bardsea, overlooking Morecambe Bay, where Sandy Herd set out a new course that was formally opened with a match between Herd and J.H. Taylor on 6th May 1910.
After the Great War, Harry Colt (assisted by Jack Setterfield and George Edwards from Newcastle) remodelled the layout for a fee of 17 guineas. The reconstruction was carried out by Frank Harris Bros. Limited for a cost of £502 6s between March and August 1923, with a small amount of additional work done the following spring at a cost of £130. The course was brought into play on 24th May 1924.
In June 1925, the golf correspondent for the Daily Dispatch reported: “Laid out in an old deer park, it is a parkland course of the very best type. The layout of the course is almost ideal from a golfer’s point of view, while the surroundings are delightful. A splendid feature is the turf; it is like walking on a super pile carpet and it is never wet.
The greens are well-nigh perfect, not fast but perfectly true. The course is admirably kept, so that there should be very little ball searching, even in the summer. The bunkering has been admirably designed and, though not severe, calls for very accurate golf indeed at many of the holes if the good player desires the figures he thinks should be his.”
Today, the layout extends to 6,264 yards from the back tees, with par set at 71; 35 out and 36 in. Highlight holes include the only par five on the front nine at the 505-yard 4th (“Mountbarrow”) with out of bounds running along the right side of the hole, and the 161-yard 8th (“Sandy Herd”) where the green is surrounded by five menacing bunkers.
On the inward half, the last and longest of the par three holes plays into the southwest corner of the property at the 188-yard 14th (“White Ghyll”) then a run of four par fours concludes the round, ending with the 432-yard 18th (“Conishead”) which sets off from close to the highest point on the course and ends at the severely sloping home green next to the clubhouse.