View of the Mansion and the Flag for Hole Number 2, behind a sand bunker, on the Beckenham Place Park Golf Course, Lewisham
Inner London's only public golf course is to close — largely thanks to a £ grant from the Lottery Heritage Fund which, in a bitter twist of irony, will pay towards the destruction of a century-old piece of the capital's sporting heritage. Lewisham Council took the decision this week to remodel Beckenham Place Park, the borough’s largest public open space, into someone’s idea of what it might have looked like in the 18th century, including creating a new lake. But to do so, the council has decided that the 18-hole golf course, built into the parkland in 1907 and open to the public since 1934, has to go, despite it being used by at least 20,000 golfers each year. Most courses are owned by private golf clubs where membership and green fees run into thousands of pounds: the nearest club to Beckenham Place Park, Sundridge Park a mile away in Bromley, charges £4,200 in joining fees and subscriptions in a member’s first year. But there is a lesser rate if you don’t want to play at weekends. A one-off round, as a lucky guest of a Sundridge Park member, will 'only' set you back around £70, and possibly the cost of some not-very-becoming golf slacks. Private golf clubs, with their strict etiquette and club house rules, can be off-putting for the uninitiated. Ian Wright, the former England and Arsenal footballer, played his first golf at Beckenham Place Park. "I didn’t want to rock up at one of these plush clubs," he told the BBC this week. eckenham Place Park is the only place in in inner London to play the ancient game without the need to spend hundreds of pounds on an expensive set of clubs, or be surrounded by characters straight from a PG Wodehouse novel, and where you don't need to know what your handicap is or how to use a mashie niblick*. Public courses are different from golf clubs: often council-owned, they are the perfect introduction to the game for the young and impecunious.
Size: 4064px × 2704px
Location: Beckenham Place Park, Lewisham, London, UK
Photo credit: © John Gaffen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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