The Course History
The first Course, 1923-1964
The first course was of nine holes. It went eastwards in four holes across the South Front lawn towards the Octagon Lake, starting near the Rotondo. The remains of a few greens can still be seen in Waterworks Field south-east of the Gothic Temple. There were hopes that the Gothic Temple would be the clubhouse, but it became the Armoury.
The first course was largely designed in December 1923 by Ian Clarke, the first Housemaster of Grenville, a forester, rugby coach and keen amateur golfer, with help from A.Stanley M. Anderson, a pupil in Grenville and then Cobham, who became a professional golfer. It helped foster two leading players, Laddie Lucas and John Langley, both in Grenville House during the early 1930s, both Boys Champions while still at school, and then both captains of golf at Cambridge and both members of the Walker Cup team for three years each. Langley commented that the course, “though welcome and avant-garde in its mere existence at the time, bore little resemblance to orthodoxy of construction”. He recalled “the long trudge up the hill among the mole-hills to the Armoury” and “the attempt to hit balls illicitly into the slits of the Monument after leaving the 9th green: an obtuse, inverted pleasure, since the ball was lost if the shot succeeded, yet ever-tempting like forbidden fruit”.
On the 1 July 1938 the Duke of Gloucester planted a Cedar of Lebanon near the then first green. The first course was improved and modernised in about 1952 by B.R. Miles, a keen amateur who was Tutor of the Medical Side from 1936 and later Senior Tutor.
The current Course, 1964
Preparatory work for the present nine-hole course began with Stoic help in 1962: “on Fridays a start has been made on the Golf Course Improvement Project”, clearing trees from a corner of Chatham Field. “This splendid new course”, as it was described in 1964, was designed by Charles Kenneth Cotton of Reading, one of the UK’s most distinguished golf architects, “suitably inspired by history”. The contractors were En-tout-cas Ltd with I.G. Lewis as turf consultant. The total length is 2,159 yards, with holes from 380 to 116 yards, par 33. It was the first completed project of the Stowe 40th Anniversary Development Appeal and cost £4,000, with the help of voluntary, and doubtless imposed, Stoic labour.
It re-used the South Front part of the old course, turning four holes into three. The other five were added in the cow pasture south of Chatham House. Three holes were described in 1964 as “outstanding”, the old 2nd, 6th and 8th, each dog-legged with trees intervening. The 8th (now the 4th, Rotundo), it was noted in 1964, “comes out of the text book” and has “the exceptional satisfaction of a full-blooded drive straight at the Headmaster’s house” (the garden is appropriately our of bounds) with “a prettily shaped little green, framed by trees … Of its kind, there can be no better hole”. As a course, “no British public school can match it.”
The new course was opened on 29October 1964 with an exhibition match. This was between the Ryder Cup players John Jacobs (“Dr Golf”) and Bernard Hunt, and three young amateur champions.
In 1967 the Stowe Putter, the annual Prep School golfing competition, was inaugurated under Andrew Vinen. He had been in Walpole House as a pupil and was housemaster of Temple and master in charge of golf. Among the distinguished guests invited to present the putter each year was the Duke of York, in 1998.
Stowe Golf Club for local players was founded in 1974. The Clubhouse near the East Boycott Pavilion was opened on 1 September 1986 by Alex Hay, the BBC golfing commentator and Ryder Cup referee. This led to changed numbering for the holes, with the first being moved from near the South Front to near the Home Park houses. The Stowe course is now one of 19 on National Trust land after Stowe School gave most of the grounds to the National Trust in 1989. Plans for an extension to 18 holes on land south of the ha-ha were drawn up in the 1980s but relinquished after 1989.
Mr Michael Bevington
Stowe Archivist
Sources:
anon, The Stoic, August 1962, p.149;
A Special Correspondent, “Stoic Golf and the New Golf Course”, The Stoic, April 1964, xxi (2), pp.46-47;
Barr, BA, “The Trees and Shrubs on the Golf Course”, The Stoic, March 1970, xxiv (2), pp.54-56;
Langley, JDA, “The Opening of the New Golf Course”, The Stoic, December 1964, xxi (4), pp.150-151.