A collection of photographs of the Clubhouse from when it was first built up to 2009 when Chris Warren was commissioned to take photographs for a Club brochure. Click here.

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#Date Of Event:1960 - 2009#
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This article appeared in the Spring 2006 edition of the Newsletter.

For photographs of the Wheatsheaf Hotel, click here

In the nineteenth century, travellers between Portsmouth and London who needed food, a bed for the night or spare horses could choose between two Liphook coaching inns. The Blue Anchor was the more famous, and it received the royal charter after King George III and Queen Charlotte stayed there. The Wheatsheaf, a mile down the road (see the photograph, below right), was its bitter rival. There were annual stagecoach races between the two hotels between Liphook and Petersfield, with wagers being made on both sides. Rivalry was intense, and on one occasion the Anchor coachman forced his rival into the ditch.

With the coming of the Portsmouth Direct Railway line in 1859, horse-drawn traffic was reduced, and the Wheatsheaf’s inn and stables were transformed into a hotel by Friary Meux Brewery and renamed The Links. It had 7 bedrooms and one of its managers was John Skiff’s father Roy, who ran the hotel from 1955 to 1969.

When Liphook Golf Company was formed in 1922 it rented the house next to the hotel which is still called the old clubhouse; it provided an office for the secretary, a meeting room, locker rooms and a small bar/coffee room. The hotel met any other needs.

The Black Huts over the road housed the pro’s shop and workshop, the caddymaster, green staff, irrigation tank, numerous carts and a stable for the Club’s black mare. Bohunt Manor Golf Club also used the clubhouse at first but as its membership increased, a clubroom was built for them next to the Black Huts. 

After the war the Club tried to purchase the Links Hotel to use it as a clubhouse; when that was turned down, the Club moved in 1949 to the present site with at first a temporary clubhouse. Friary Meux Brewery sold the Links to Mr and Mrs Grace in 1985, and they sold it to  Richard Northcott in 2000. Richard carried out a modernization programme, and the Links was sold to Fuller’s Brewery of Chiswick in 2002.

The hotel now stands to benefit from tourism which should increase following its inclusion in the National Park; it has recently received planning permission for 35 extra bedrooms. Fuller’s will review the market later this year.

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#Date Of Event:19th Century#
#Date Item Created:2006#
#Author:Tony Rudgard#
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Of the 281 members in 1928, 42 had handicaps at 10 or under, (2 at plus figures), and 126 had no handicaps at all. Members had plenty of time to play golf! The course standard scratch score was 76, which may be the reason why the handicaps were lower than present day ones, although today’s clubs and balls are much more sophisticated.  Most clubs were made by the Professional, Percy Lockyer and his two Assistants.

The Links or the Wheatsheaf Hotel in those days, provided our Clubhouse, and buttered scones and suitable beverages, were partaken after a hard day’s golf. Copies of The Liphook Story are available at £ 19 from Maggie Disney in the Office

Non-shareholders paid Entrance Fees £ 5 . 5s. Annual subs Men £5  5s and ladies £4  4s. Family Members –Sons and Daughters between 14 and 18 £ 1guinea and had no vote). Service Officers £ 3  3s. Regimental Messes.18 playing members at 20 guineas and 9 members at 10 guineas.  £3  3s. Ministers of Religion £ 2  2s. (There were special rates for School Masters later. And people say that today’s categories are complicated!) These rates sound a lot less expensive than today but when you factor in inflation these rates are pretty much the same as we are paying in 2006.

Link to Pics of Percy Lockyear and Wheatsheaf/Links Hotel Click here

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For photos click here

This painting of the 11th green is owned by Lt Col and Mrs Stephen Gurney who live in Titchfield and are members at Lee-on-the-Solent. Stephen Gurney was related to Katharine Anson who was Tom Simpson’s secretary when he was working in Liphook. In 2001 the Gurneys answered a notice in Hampshire Golf News which asked for historical information about the Club; we are very grateful to them for getting in touch. Stephen knows Liphook well; he used to captain the RAGS team in their annual match here against the Royal Navy.    

Tom Simpson was an artist as well as a golf course architect and exhibited his paintings in London. This painting shows four bunkers round the 11th green, (the 2nd green on the original course); there are now three bigger ones. Incidentally, the green was a little wider in the early days. The Douglas fir trees were planted on the Bronze Age bowl barrow in about 1900, and most are still growing strong. There are more bowl barrows in the area and this one is registered with Hampshire County Council. 

As described in ‘The Liphook Story’, Tom Simpson’s partner Arthur Croome designed Liphook Golf Course in 1922; Simpson continued to develop the course when he joined the Club in 1924. He had design experience as a member of Woking where he re-designed the 4th hole. He went on to design and re-design courses in the UK and Europe and also visited the US. His technique of using plasticene modelling (seen in the photo, left) for course design was unique to Tom; it helped the design process, and enabled him to explain his ideas better to others.

and since then ...

by David Murdoch

We decided to remodel the bunkers at the 11th this year and carried out historical research to get a feel for how they first looked when they were first designed and how they had evolved. I worked with course architect Tom Mackenzie, a member of the Tom Simpson Society. We looked at old photographs, sketches and wartime aerial photographs. Originally there were four bunkers, including two to the left of the green which have since been amalgamated. The photographs confirmed how much the bunkers on each side had encroached over time. The middle section had become much narrower than it had been and the banks had grown significantly higher from sand splashing out of the bunkers.

On the basis of this information we decided to retain three bunkers instead of reverting back to four, to reduce the height of the bankings, to move the left bunker back slightly from the green and to plant heather sporadically on the front bankings. The front bunker is close to the original design, apart from the addition of heather, and we have made it possible for golfers on the tees to see the sand in all three bunkers. We made our alterations in sympathy with the original design whilst being mindful of the demands of the modern game. I should pay credit to our local contractor/shaper David Tull whose skill and understanding of the requirements was exceptional.

This article was published in the Newsletter, October 2006. A subsequent article about work done on 11th Green was published in Autumn 2009 (click here).

To see Tom Simpson's painting of 11th green, click here

The Liphook course was designed during a golden age of golf architects, some of them as famous as the great professional golfers of the time including James Braid and Harry Vardon.

Liphook is the only course designed by Arthur Croome, founder of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society; he died relatively young in 1930. His mantle was taken over by Tom Simpson, a partner in the same firm and considered one of the greatest golf architects. He was also a great friend of Liphook.

Simpson was a lawyer and learned his golf at Woking. He fell in love with Liphook and moved home to ‘Quinces’ in Bramshott. Croome and he shared the new philosophy of ‘strategic’ design which he had introduced to courses such as Sunningdale, Woking, Lytham & St Annes, Carnoustie and Rye (read more about ‘Strategic’ course design in The Liphook Story).

He was elected Manager of the Green in 1933 (his own version of ‘Chairman of the Green Committee’) but he was no ‘committee man’. On one occasion, when he thought the Committee was discussing proposals he had made, he drove his Rolls Royce slowly back and forth outside the Committee Room window. He resigned two years later.

Simpson made many improvements to Croome’s design including the mound (known as “Simpson’s Folly” right, top picture) to the left of the 9th green, intended to make players think where to place their drive in order to put their second on the green. He also introduced slopes in front of the bunkers on the 11th green (below, right), keeping the straight shot on the green but punishing approaches from the side.

He gave what may have been the only radio broadcast of the period on the subject of golf course architecture. When he died at the age of 87, the notice in The Times stated only: “Simpson – On 10th May, 1964, Tom Simpson late of South Warnborough. No flowers, no letters, no mourning.

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#Date Of Event:1880- 1957#
#Date Item Created:2006#
#Author:Tony Rudgard & Jess Stiles#
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This article appeared as part of a compilation of articles in the Newsletter of Autumn, 2010, revisiting the history of Irrigation at Liphook and reporting on the effects of dry summers in 2006 and 2010. For photos of Irrigation work on the course, click here

When the course was first built, its greens were watered by  a thousand-gallon tank hauled round the greens on a trailer pulled by the Club’s black mare. This proved to be inadequate in hot weather and in 1924 negotiations started with Blake Bros of Accrington, to provide a piped system to the 18 greens.

By 1928 a sump was installed near the Links Hotel and water flowed in to it from drainage ditches, the Wheatsheaf pond and a smaller pond on the other side of what was then the A3. A pump was installed in the 10th Tee car park, with a suction pipe under the road to the sump. Pressure pipes were then installed to valves beside each green and hoses were taken round to each green in turn. The pipes were laid in galvanized wrought iron and whilst some corrosion took place, it was not until 1970s that leaks began to appear in the suction and pressure pipes.

Dry summers demanded more water on the greens and some on the tees. In the 1980s a water storage tank and mains water supply were installed in the 10th Tee car park, and a new plastic pipeline system was laid round the course. In the 1990s the ponds and drainage system were drying up, and a bigger tank was installed near the clubhouse, together with a bore hole, sump pump and a re-vamped green and tees watering system.

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#Date Of Event:1921 - 2000#
#Date Item Created:October 2010#
#Author:Tony Rudgard#
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It has only taken five years to get there …. but the immense work done by Tony Rudgard and others has now come to fruition. Well, almost.

In the Spring Newsletter we advertised for someone, probably a student, who might spend time during the summer vacation, indexing the Club’s records. The response was gratifying; spoilt for choice, I invited Becky Hilbert (daughter of members Pippa and Stewart) to do the job. Becky continued the noble work done a couple of years ago by Chris Cairns.

To see the results of their labours, visit the Archives section of the website. Put a name or topic in the Search cell at the top right, browse Tag Cloud or click on Archive in the top menu for a full list of available entries. Then carry on clicking the relevant links…

Records, of course, come in different forms. Many are paper, documents, photographs, books &c,  but for a decade or so, most have been created digitally, on the Club website, the raw material for Newsletters, even official papers are composed on computers. The internet is now the cheapest form of storage so we have loaded a large number of files onto a database attached to the Club website while photos are stored in an internet ‘gallery’.

 Paper documents are stored in one of two places. Most are in a filing cabinet in the Managing Secretary’s office which has its own numbering system to help you locate the correct document. Others are stored at the Hampshire Records Office and reading them will entail a trip to Winchester.

Between them, Chris and Becky have indexed a vast number of documents and digital files. Tony Rudgard has spent a decade sorting a vast array of paper records and putting them into categories and filing cabinets. I have been through six years’ content on the website and sifted past editions of the Newsletter; I have also  sorted a host of digital photos. Chris and Becky did the rest.

It hasn’t been easy second-guessing the editor or historian of the future. I have encouraged Tony to be ruthless in discarding ephemeral information in which future researchers are unlikely to be interested, for fear of overwhelming the system. (If one thing is certain, it is that Sod’s Law will apply and we shall have discarded exactly the material they do require.)

There is still work to be done. I am leaving it to the Juniors Organiser and the Ladies editor to decide what they want to archive and hope that they will be able to index their own material.

Please let us know about any bugs you find in the Archive so that we can put them right. And if any of you have records of the Club which you feel should be included, please do send or give them to Tony or me.

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#Date Of Event:October 2010#
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#Author:Michael Blakstad#
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1158 First recorded Lord of the Manor for Rogate Bohunt, William de Chesney.

1866 35 Lords later, Sir John Hawkshaw, celebrated Victorian engineer, buys the manorship.

1897 Common land, including Wheatsheaf, ‘inclosed’ by the Lord of the Manor.

1921 Public meeting at the Anchor Hotel agrees to form Golf Club.

1923 Colonel Oliver Hawkshaw grants the Club a 99-year licence over part of his estate, to form almost half the course.

Oliver Hawkshaw sells lordship of Manor and later Hollycombe House but retains the Wheatsheaf Inclosure.

1949 Clubhouse moved from Links Hotel to wooden huts at western edge of Wheatsheaf Inclosure – course re-aligned to accommodate.

1953 The Inclosure  passes to Mrs Olivia Creswell who sells the remaining plots for housing. Spelling changes to ‘Enclosure’.

1961 New Clubhouse is opened by Roger Wethered.

1966 Developer’s attempt to build more houses to the south thwarted by four residents who bought the roads and formed the Wheatsheaf Private Roads Company.

1990 WERA formed, limited by the Guarantee of all 36 members/residents. Gerry Plumer, Liphook member, was first chairman

1994 New lease signed with LGC continuing licence to maintain the land as a golf course until 2300, at a peppercorn rent of £1 a year.

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By 1963 there were 35 houses on the Enclosure, over half of which were occupied by Liphook members. Many prominent members have lived there from the early days. Col J E Blois Johnson, who lived at Hollycombe Wood, was Captain from 1928 to 1930; his wife was a member of the first first Ladies Committee and twice Ladies Captain. Allan and Doddy Macbeth - the only couple to hold captaincies simultaneously - lived at Wheatsheaf Corner. She had been British amateur lady champion. In 1963 the Club hit the gossip pages when an attractive Curtis Cup player - and former dancer - Marley Spearman - stayed on the Enclosure with members, Mr & Mrs Steven Harris, during a Ladies Championship and repaid their hospitality by marrying the husband. Grahame Bishop, Captain and President in the ‘70s and ‘80s, owned Birchwood, behind the 16th tee, where the actress Felicity Kendal now lives.



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#Date Of Event:2010#
#Date Item Created:October 2010#
#Author:Michael Blakstad & Tony Rudgard#
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On 19th century maps, the large area of Quarry to the left of today’s 16th hole is marked as Gravel Pits. The Inclosure does not include this area. In 1929 there were two Quarry houses but none on the Wheatsheaf Inclosure. Between 1936 and 1947 the number of Quarry houses grew to 6. Ralph Carver relates that his mother, who was married from Quarry House in 1935, told stories of house parties coming back from dances at dawn in their tails and long dresses and swearing that they could par the 9th (now 17th) amid much hilarity.



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#Date Of Event:19th century to present#
#Date Item Created:October 2010#
#Author:Michael Blakstad & Tony Rudgard#
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