[Peter Flory]

I know that they went out of style, were criticized for being unimaginative/ calculated, and unnatural, and were neutered by distance increases... but are there any remaining?  I see so many photos in early American golf history and then many more in Hutchinson's British Golf Links and other sources.

If they are all gone, what courses have the most remaining elements? 

An example of what I'm imagining would be something like Royal Eastbourne, which seems to have actually gained the "Royal" because Queen Victoria's grandson took a liking to playing there.  The existing version of the course still has a lot of geometric features and unnatural green complexes, but they have mostly been rounded and look more like a Langford/Dye collaboration than Victorian. 

Here are some flyovers- make sure to expand the view if you click on one.  The 2nd, 3rd, and 8th holes are all good examples. 
https://www.regc.co.uk/devonshire_course

The original course had a lot of moments like this (morphed into today's 12th hole):


I don't mean to distract from the question with the specifics of Eastbourne though.  The original Eltham Golf Club- now Blackheath would be a more pure example perhaps.  The crossing hedge looks like it was also in the original version of the course and is very steeplechase-y.  However, it looks like all of the other exaggerated hazards have been normalized. 

[Niall C]

Peter

I'm guessing that what you mean by Victorian style courses are courses with square flattish benched greens inserted into the landscape, gun platform type tees and what we would now think of as fairly crude berm type cross hazards.

In a UK context lot of those courses were redesigned, worked on, morphed into a more modern style or just simply disappeared. Gun platform tees are still fairly common, usually at low budget courses while benched rectangular greens can still sometimes be found, again usually at low budget courses in out of the way places. The sort of places where bugger all money has been spent over the years. I can't imagine however that you will find a Victorian style course that has all these types of features still intact.

I've played a couple of courses with chocolate drop mounding (Hopeman and Rothes) on one hole each but I'm not even sure in the case of Rothes if the course dates from back then. I can't think of any courses off hand that has crude berm type bunkering.

Niall 

[BCrosby]

It is remarkable how rapidly "Victorian" inland designs disappeared. What was at one time a dominant design tenet, one that appeared virtually everywhere, was almost completely washed away by the new architectural ideas of Low, Colt, Fowler et al. beginning about 1905. The popularity of their revolutionary "thinking" golf architecture was such that Victorian features became vanishingly rare by the 1920s, at least in the UK.


Note that David Normoyle has been involved in a restoration of Saratoga Springs.  Dating from the 1890s, it was a classic Victorian course (as virtually all courses were in the era). A goal is to restore some its cops, cross hazards and platform greens. I think it is a very cool idea.


Bob

[Thomas Dai]

WWI and WWII had an effect.
These kind of features were mainly on inland courses and during both wars as much suitable land as could be planted for crops or left to grow as fodder (for WWI horses) was. Some Clubs/courses never reappeared. In times of need .....
atb

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