Dr. W. Laidlaw Purves – William Laidlaw Purves was born at Edinburgh in 1842, the son of a physician. Purves was educated at Edinburgh University. In contrast to his father initially he turned to law, but then had a change of heart, and while employed in a lawyer’s office began to study medicine. His parents died during these years and at the age of 19 Purves found himself a ship’s doctor operating off the coast of Australia. After three years in Australia he returned to Europe and continued his medical studies at Universities in Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, Utrecht, and Paris. After his European educational tour he eventually settled in London as a consulting aural surgeon at Guy’s Hospital. Purves had a most successful medical career, becoming ophthalmic and aural surgeon at the Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System and aural surgeon at the Aural College and Academy for the Blind.
Medicine may have been Purves’s vocation but golf was clearly his passion. He learned the game on the Bruntsfield Links in golf crazed Edinburgh but found a very different situation when he arrived in England. There were but four golf clubs of any note in the entire country – Westward Ho!, Hoylake, Blackheath and Wimbledon. The first two were far from his home in London, and the latter two were nearby but poor substitutes for the real thing. For the next nine years Purves searched Greater London for a perfect site on which to build a golf course. Epping, Epsom, the downs from Reigate to Farnham, Windsor Forest, Bushey, Richmond Park were all prospected. At Epsom he actually marked out a Sunday course in 1875.
The coastal areas within reach of London were also surveyed. Purves inspected the Isle of Wight, New Forest, Southampton, Littlehampton, and Bognor. In 1876 Felixstowe was examined, and a golf course laid out. But Felixstowe was not completely satisfactory, in fact none of the sites were satisfactory, that is until he discovered Sandwich in 1877. Finding the perfect site was only half the battle, for the next several years Purves tried to convince his fellow golfers that the property held amazing potential and they should help finance the project. Finally in 1883 he had generated enough interest to make an offer to secure the land, actually he made four offers, unfortunately all failed. At last in 1887 an offer was accepted, a lease secured and a syndicate of 36 formed. Purves proceeded to lay out the course, and St. Georges was born.
The course immediately drew universal praise, and not long after became a fixture of the Open and Amateur Championships. Although some of the quirkier aspects of the early course are now gone, like the Maiden and Haides, its bones remain very much as Purves originally made them. One must also give credit to Ramsey Hunter, the club’s first professional, who helped to formalize the layout. Purves’s success at Sandwich led to another opportunity in 1888, when at the request of the proprietors of land on the coast near New Romney, he laid out Littlestone. Purves died in 1918 at Hartwick Cottage, his home and one of the oldest residences in Wimbledon.