Moor Allerton NLE

[Neil_Crafter]

A small breakthrough of sorts. I recently acquired Kolin Robertson's 1935 book "Some Yorkshire Golf Courses" and it has a section on Moor Allerton, including a couple of photographs. I have scanned the section and include it below. It includes some descriptions of selected holes which is nice. Seems Robertson was impressed with the course.

[Neil_Crafter]

just bumping this so it doesn't get lost

[Neil_Crafter]

Seems my last bump got no response, perhaps this will as at last we have a detailed photo of one of the greens and bunkering at Moor Allerton!

Courtesy of Niall Carlton - who I am sure won't mind me posting this - a photo of the 6th green was in 'Golfing' of October 1923.

[Tom MacWood]

Neil
Is that Mackenzie in the bunker?

Refresh my memory as to why the club moved.

[Jon Wiggett]

Neil
Is that Mackenzie in the bunker?

Refresh my memory as to why the club moved.

Tom,

the club moved because their land was worth a fortune as building land. They bought a large piece of land on the edge of the city and were able to build 27 holes and modern clubhouse. The old course was very highly thought of and made up part of a golden area for courses with Sandmoor GC, Alwoodley, Moortown and Moor Allerton all within 100 yards of each other. The new Moor Allerton course was very poorly received being almost unplayable in a stiff breeze, though I have not played it in over 20 years so it may have improved with age.

Jon

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Thanks for the photo. That could be MacK, I suppose.

Tom, the knock on effect of their moving out was that when the houses were built on Moortown's boundary with the former Moor Allerton their proximity was such that substantial alterations had to be made to Moortown - not for the better in many opinions.

[Jon Wiggett]

Thanks for the photo. That could be MacK, I suppose.

Tom, the knock on effect of their moving out was that when the houses were built on Moortown's boundary with the former Moor Allerton their proximity was such that substantial alterations had to be made to Moortown - not for the better in many opinions.

Mark,

certainly when the alterations were first undertaken it was detrimental. The two new holes after the old 5th were not a patch on the lost holes and totally out of character to boot. They also ended up altering the 17th due to housing on the land that used to be the first two and last two holes at Sandmoor. Here the new holes, with the exception of perhaps the 4th were no where near as good as those lost.

Jon

[Neil_Crafter]

Tom, possibly is Mac given his propensity of having photos of his courses taken with him in them! But I'm not sure it looks like him that much.
Thanks Jon for explaining the move to Tom.
And yes, I have seen the 'new' holes at Moortown and they were sadly disappointing.

[Jon Wiggett]

Neil,

it is sad to see a club with so much history and a great course effectively downgrade through no fault of their own. The house owners that forced the club to alter the course owned houses built when the course was already there and whose value was higher due to the course. Having said that the club did not help itself with the new holes. Does anyone know who the GCA was?

Jon

[Neil_Crafter]

Jon - I understood that those Moortown holes were done by Donald Steel.

[James Boon]

Neil, Jon,

I know what a pain the search engine can be so here's a couple of links to Moortown threads just for reference. Some discussion and an old plan showing the changes also included:
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,46708.25.html
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,48502.0.html

Cheers,

James

[Jon Wiggett]

Thanks James,

good find.

Jon