Carlisle Golf Club

History

Opened Club founded 1908; at Aglionby since 1936

Founded

1908, as Carlisle City Golf Club

Aglionby bought

1936, 132 acres for £3,600

Opened

25 March 1940

Designed by

Charles MacKenzie, remodelled by Philip Mackenzie Ross, 1944

Carlisle's golfers spent their first decades without a course of their own. Golf was played in the city long before the club existed, back to the 1870s by some accounts, with a nine-hole course by the 1880s. They played on the Swifts racecourse (the same ground the Turf was built to overlook) until 1890, then at Dalston Green, then back to the Swifts again, and only in winter, because the land was wanted for farming in summer. In 1895 they went in with Silloth so members could play year-round, on the coast in summer and at Dalston in winter.

In 1908 they decided Carlisle needed a course of its own all year and moved to Durran Hill Park as Carlisle City Golf Club. The land was rented and couldn't be bought, so in 1936 they bought 132 acres at Aglionby for £3,600, which is where they've stayed.

Major Charles MacKenzie, brother of Alister MacKenzie of Augusta National, laid out the course, and Theodore Moone then altered it. The clubhouse opened on 25 March 1940, and Philip Mackenzie Ross remodelled the course in 1944. Sydney Scott was professional here from 1945 to 1957 and finished second in the 1954 Open at Royal Birkdale. The name changed to Carlisle Golf Club in 1959. Frank Pennink revised the course again in 1973, and Jonathan Davison completed a bunker restoration in 2021, filling in hazards added over the years and returning the rest towards Mackenzie Ross.

It was the first club in Cumbria to host R&A Regional Open Qualifying, and has done so six times since 1996. It has also had the Men's English Seniors Championship, the Ladies' North of England Championship, and in 2023 three national junior and regional finals in one season. The course is around 6,250 yards, par 71, parkland among beech and pine with streams across several holes, and rated one of the better inland courses in the north.

The clubhouse bar is the reason it is on this site. Solway CAMRA, who survey it, put it plainly: the bar is open to visitors as well as members, with a dress code applying to visitors and members alike, so it is not a place to turn up in football shorts. Cumberland Council's register complicates that, though: it lists a club premises certificate (CP020), which legally covers only members and their bona fide guests, not visitors generally. CAMRA's survey may describe genuine informal practice, since golf clubs often wave through visiting players, but that is not the same thing as a public licence.

It is worth separating two kinds of visitor, because golf directories blur them. Playing the course needs booking in advance, a handicap certificate and a green fee of roughly fifty to eighty pounds. Walking into the bar or the dining room, overlooking the 18th green, needs none of that. The restaurant seats a hundred and serves through the day.