- AddressSweetbriar Ln, Sheringham NR26 8HG, UK
- Championships hosted
Sheringham Golf Club is located high on the clifftops on an undulating thin sliver of land, which is wedged between the North Sea cliff edge and the North Norfolk Railway. Steam trains and vintage diesels occasionally rattle past the course, which is set within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The club was originally founded in 1891 and Tom Dunn laid down nine holes, returning in 1898 to extend the course to its present 18 holes.
“At Sheringham we shall be called upon to do only a moderate amount of climbing and some of the very stoutest hitting with the brassey that there has ever been required of us.” Wrote Bernard Darwin in his 1910 book, The Golf Courses of the British Isles: “The theory of the good length hole has been carried almost to its ultimate limit.” The course measures 6,546 yards from the back tees, factor in the North Sea winds and you’ve got a serious test of golf. It’s almost unimaginable how difficult this course must have been in the days of the hickory shaft and the gutty ball.
The best holes are undoubtedly those that run close to the edge of the cliffs. The 6th “is a very attractive hole,” wrote Darwin, “with the most glorious tee-shot from a high hill, a fine view of the sea, and a fascinating approach shot at the end.” Around the turn, the gorse and the railway line becomes the most significant hazards, which wait with patience to catch anything struck offline.
The English Ladies Close Amateur Championship has been played at Sheringham on three occasions, most recently in 1991, when Karen Stupples narrowly lost to Nicola Buxton. But in the 1920 event, the mighty Cecil Leitch was expected to win, but Joyce Wethered had different ideas. “It was by the way,” wrote Darwin in Golf Between Two Wars, “near the seventeenth green that there first appeared the traditional railway train which puffed and snorted loudly as Miss Wethered putted out and of which she was so entirely unaware, that, on being congratulated on her imperturbability, she is alleged to have asked, ‘What train?’”
Play Sheringham alongside its near neighbour, Royal Cromer, and you’ll have played two of England's finest cliff-top courses.
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Tom Dunn started his golf career as a club maker at North Berwick in 1869 and remained as the club’s professional for twelve years, employing two men and his younger brother Willie as an apprentice.
