Thanks Mark, very interesting.
IOW
The Needles you can still make out some features on Google earth. It’s INCREDIBLY exposed to winds being hundreds of feet in the air. The local rule was you had to take a drop if your ball went within six club lengths of the edge.
Royal IOW is profiled as Bembridge in British Golf links.
There’s more on NLE courses on the IOW and London in Through the Green which is now available on line.
Mersea was a Braid and quite highly thought of and was another one lost circa WW11. Mersea is an island in the mudflats of Essex, quite flat. I have more info somewhere.
Molesey Hurst. This one went to a housing development. I was told the turf was so fine it was lifted and re-laid on Ascot racecourse. In 2000 they put a marker down to record Garrick’s golf day, roughly where the course was later. There’s more on this in a thread by FBD called “A Park in the Park” which is about Home Park GC and yes Surbiton is puzzling. Home Park is North of the river in, the area beloved by cockney’s, Hampton Wick.
I’d love to know more about Blakeney and Cley. The landscape there would have made Brancaster look poplualted, It’s a long spit of land out into the sea.
I thought Archerfield was between the new Renaissance Club and the West Links?
Clapham Common is as flat as a pancake and today is always crowded with many ball games. Approx 3 miles of the centre of London. Imagine a 9 hole course in Regents Park! The club had to move, first to Tooting then Mitcham then becoming peripatetic, but one of the big London clubs still plays for the Clapham trophy. Can anyone recall which? Golf was played on Tooting Bec, another flattish open patch of clay common ground. Darwin cited it as just the sort of land that made Heaths so attractive. There were near riots about the toffs playing on such a populated space and it went too.
I’ll look for more tomorrow.