[Jeffrey Prest]

How ironic, in the current debate about the Old Course, that I should be flicking through Vol 4 of Golf Architecture - a worldwide perspective and stumble across Kevin W Rich's article, Protecting America's Historic Golf Courses.

This talks about protecting venerable courses (more from destruction than alteration, admittedly) by registering them with America's National Register of Historic Places and I wondered if British GCA members knew if we had any kind of UK equivalent. I know we have listed buildings over here but wasn't sure if extending the concept to land had ever been investigated.

[Adam Lawrence]

I was having this discussion with my wife the other day. She pointed out that there are lots of landscape structures - many of Capability Brown's parks, for example, that are protected by English Heritage. Come to that, there are plenty of golf courses - the nine holer at Stowe, Tom Mackenzie's new course at Heythrop in Oxfordshire, the course at Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire, or Rudding Park in Yorkshire - that are within listed parks.

Now, based on this, I can't see a fundamental reason why someone should not apply to have a golf course listed in this way. EIGCA produced a document, in association with English Heritage, a few years ago, entitled 'Golf Courses as Historic Designed Landscapes'. Anyone can apply for a building or a structure to be listed. It would be interesting to see how English Heritage would respond if someone did this for a golf course.

[Mark Bourgeois]

In Scotland the equivalent is Historic Scotland, a government agency. Three categories of listings exist: buildings, monuments, and gardens and designed landscapes.

The St Andrews Links are Inventoried in Gardens and Designed Landscapes, the only golf courses in that category. Historically, Inventory items carried no statutory weight. That changed in 2011, but the weight is very light: any changes to an Inventory item that require planning permission require the planning authorities to 'consult' with Historic Scotland.

No planning permission? No consultation. Changing greens, moving bunkers and lowering hillocks require no planning permission, even for artefacts deemed important enough to be included in the Inventory. The St Andrews Links' Inventory designation, as currently written and as a conservation measure, counts for very little.

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