Here is a strange one. Burnham & Berrow used to have an artisans group, The Berrow Artisans, who were allowed to play free on the course at certain times in exchange for maintenance labour on the course. Eventually, the parent club started to ask for a contribution which went quite high by the mid 70s. There were also complaints that artisans were using the club and that some artisans could easily afford the club dues. Additionally, the social mores surrounding golf clubs was fast changing - they were becoming more egalitarian and artisans didn't necessarily fit into this new world order. In 1981 the parent club offered full membership without the need to pay an entrance fee to the artisans. There are still some dozen members of Burnham who were once artisans.
From my perspective, I think its a great pity that artisan clubs are on the decline. Much like caddying, what a great way to learn about the game: work a bit on the course and learn something in exchange for free golf.
Ciao
I used to be an artisan member myself Sean, of Stoke Poges. I was working on the greenstaff at the time and that was the only way I could get some competitive golf in. There were about 30 of them in the club and we inhabited an old cellar in the clubhouse. They were the most hilarious people to play golf with. Early morning whiskeys before tee off, an endless steam of filthy jokes, breaking wind on the top of other peoples backswings. Great fun!!
To give you an example of the sort of eccentricities that they were capable of I will recount the true story that one of them called Jim told me. Jim was a typical old artisan full of all sorts of aches and ailments that a lifetime of toil at the local chemical factory had bestowed upon him. One day he and an equally worn out partner were playing a foreball match against another local artisan team. Between them they had as usual been soundly thrashed and so Jim came up a fiendish ruse on how they could retrieve their lost stake money. “I bet you,” he said to the opposition “that me and my partner have got five balls between us”. (I must just point out that the balls in question were not the ones used for playing golf but were in fact the low compression variety that men possess for the purposes of furthering the species.) Upon hearing this statement Jim’s partner said “Hold on a minute Jim. Do you know what you’re doing”? “Don’t worry,” said Jim “It’ll be alright” and he repeated the challenge to the opposition. As they were artisans themselves they were not particularly surprised at the conversation, which was quite typical in such circles but they were rather intrigued. After further discussion on the bet and further objections from Jim’s partner the opposition agreed, reasoning that witnessing this unusual spectacle would be worth the money anyway. The scene was then set for the full exposure of Jim and his partners private accoutrements for the opposing team and presumably anyone else in the area to view. At this point Jim’s partner said “well Jim, I hope you’ve got four, cos. I’ve only got the one!”
To explain, Jim it turned out, had caught something in his nether regions that had given the impression of having an extra one of these spherical objects. He had assumed that his partner had the standard number therefore bringing the total to five. However, what Jim did not realise was his partner had recently lost one of the said objects to the surgeons scalpel having not long previously developed problems of his own down below, so to speak.