[BCrosby]

Our own Neil Crafter is cited on the CBGC website as having discovered that MacKenzie redid eight holes in 1926 and that Bernard Darwin wrote a club history the same year.

CBGC is a new name to me. It is located in Surrey. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an avid golfer, was the club's long time secretary.

How much of MacK is there and is the course worth a visit? I note that at least one ranking has CBGC in the top 100 in the world.

Bob

[Mark Chaplin]

Crowborough Beacon is actually in East Sussex about 10 miles south of Tunbridge Wells, the course is on public land whilst can result in the odd bunker party in the summer. The course has several decent holes including the 2nd, 6th a classic long par 3 over a ravine and a tough uphill 18th.

Certainly worth a visit in spring or autumn as it can get very wet in the winter and very dry and bouncy in the summer. It's certainly top 10 in Sussex and 100-150 in the UK, with the greatest of respect to CBGC anyone who rates it top 100 in the world hasn't played many courses.

[Neil_Crafter]

Bob
Thanks. Darwin wrote a club handbook for CG+BGC which the club did not know about and in it was a reference to Dr Mackenzie redesigning one of the holes, the 7th if I recall. This led me to enquire with them as I knew Darwin was an unimpeachable source and would not have got his attribution to Mac wrong, especially considering the two knew each other well. They looked into their records and lo and behold there were a number of references to Mackenzie's work from 1924-26, that they had ignored before as there was someone on the committee at the time who was a Dr and another who was a Mackenzie and they just thought it was a muckup of names. Oops! Hence my listing as the discoverer of this info. Their records show that Mackenzie prepared a plan of alterations for them, but I'm not certain the club actually knows precisely what work was done under Mac's plan.

As to how much remains of Mackenzie's work I am really not sure. I have never seen the course and have not investigated what changes may have been made since.
Neil

[BCrosby]

Thanks Mark and Neil.

A club with an interesting history - in more than just architectural ways. My first thought was that Conan Doyle knew Darwin and MacKenzie and was responsible for getting them involved. At the time Conan Doyle was one of the most famous people in the English-speaking world.

Pictures of the course on the club website are quite interesting. Beautiful rolling terrain.

Bob

[Tom_Doak]

I walked around Crowborough back in 1982 when I was traveling in the UK.  I was following a good elderly woman golfer for a couple of holes, and when I went back through the pro shop they told me it was Miss Enid Wilson, who had won the Women's Amateur in 1931-32-33 and who also wrote a chapter on women's golf for one of Darwin's books.

Crowborough is a very dramatic site (hilly, with deep gullies in between the hills) and some memorable holes ... somewhat reminiscent of Royal Ashdown Forest which is much more well known in the USA due to an article by Jim Finegan years back.

I didn't see anything at Crowborough that instantly screamed "MacKenzie" but obviously in 1982 I wasn't so thoroughly familiar with his work.  I'll try to get back next time I am over there.

[Neil_Crafter]

Bob
A good thought there.

Darwin and Conan Doyle both wrote for The Strand magazine - this mag was famous for CD's Sherlock Holmes mysteries and as the proprietor was a friend of Darwin, it is very possible the two knew each other. Darwin was also one of the country's foremost experts on Sherlockiana and was an avid reader of the Holmes stories with an encyclopaedic memory for its facts and storylines. Somehow Darwin would have found a way to meet one of his heroes I feel sure. Whether Doyle knew Mackenzie separately is rather less certain, but as Mac and Darwin were friends it is certainly possible that Doyle asked Darwin to recommend an architect and put Mac's name forward. And likely that Doyle asked Darwin to write their handbook too. Darwin did a limited number of these and I expect he charged quite handsomely for the chance for a club to have his name on their handbook, as he was the premier golf writer in Britain, both books, magazines and newspapers by the early 1920's when these handbooks became popular.

[Tom_Doak]

Neil:

Surely you are right that a personal relationship between Doyle and Darwin would have contributed to getting Darwin to write a club history.

Whether Darwin would have recommended MacKenzie is far less clear to me.  I believe Darwin was equally friendly with Messrs. Colt and Alison, and Dr. MacKenzie's appearance at Crowborough was apparently not long after his partnership with Colt and Alison dissolved.

I don't know if Darwin ever made recommendations of architects to hire ... have you any other examples where he did?  I suspect it's just as likely that Doyle knew MacKenzie somehow.

[Tony_Muldoon]

Interesting where these threads lead.

Neil would you not agree that Darwin was also a good friend of Colt's?  I recall several references to Colt (not always by name 'the Architect') but none of MacKenzie.  (The new software has alerted me to Tom's similar thoughs while I was penning this.)


Conan Doyle was also a member at New Zealand a club that is only a few miles from Darwin's Woking.  He wrote a book for them too and was a little dismisive of NZ.  I assumed that was done as a favour to the club and not for pecuniary gain. How many other such books do you know of?


The first assistant professional was Horace Rawlins who went to the US in 1895 and according to the Centurians of Golf was the first to win something called "the US Open Championship".

[Tom Dunne]

I've played CBGC. It's well worth a visit--yet more ammunition for those that argue that the quality of England's "average course" is higher than any other country in the world. I enjoyed the course a great deal, though I have no idea how much MacKenzie is there (if any). The first half dozen holes, with the exception of a throwaway par-3 in the middle, are all very good. CBGC is on a beautiful piece of land--Sussex downland, some of the highest ground in southern Britain, so the views are terrific.

CBGC struck me as a sleepy but well-heeled club. I played it on a weekday afternoon and saw maybe one or two other groups out there--they were playing foursomes, and moving very fast.

Makes a very nice day of 36 paired with Royal Ashdown Forest.

[BCrosby]

Among other connections, Darwin, Colt and Alison were all active members of the Oxford Cambridge Golfing Society and all three had participated in OCGS matches for more than two decades by 1926.

I don't think MacK was a member, though he did attend Cambridge. I assume that's because he wasn't a good enough golfer to make the university team.

Bob

[Peter Pallotta]

Bob - the mention of Conan Doyle reminded me of an unusual reference I read once and had to go now to look up again - the one and only reference I've ever seen to Conan Doyle laying out a golf course!

It's from the June 1914 Golf Illustrated. It mentions ACD going to visit in Canada a friend from his days in the South African war who was now working to develop Jasper:

"Under government supervision and control Jasper Park is being opened to the tourists of the world. Remote from civilization, in this mountain fastness a veritable kingdom of nature is administered by the Canadian government, through Lieutenant-colonel Rogers, as a pleasure and resting ground for the nations of the world. Around the Administration Building has sprung up a beautiful mountain town, called Jasper. Here the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway is building a million dollar hotel, and the government has laid out a model townsite. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was at Jasper, Lieutenant-colonel Rogers conceived the idea of having Sir Arthur lay out the golf links for this park. The illustration shows Sir Arthur laying out the golf course..."

Peter

[Rich Goodale]

Peter

I seem to remember Conan Doyle designing a golf course in Vermont.  He did teach Rudyard Kipling how to golf in 1894 at CD's course in Vermont.  CD is also credited with invented the game of "snow golf" using red balls.

Rich

[BCrosby]

Peter - Great stuff. I remember now that you had posted something on ACD. It's what I've been trying to dredge up from the murky depths all day.

Evidence that ACD kept up with matters architectural (to steal from G&S) and might have known any number of architects. Which to say, he probably didn't need Colt to get a recommendation.

I'd guess that Neil is right, that ACD knew MacK as co-writers at The Strand magazine.  

Bob

 

[Neil_Crafter]

Tom and Tony
Certainly Darwin was a good friend of Colt, and Alison, and Low and Croome and Fowler and Simpson and Campbell (who was a 'roving' reporter for Darwin for a while) and Hutchison. I'm sure he knew every architect working in England. As Bob says below, many of them were O&CGS members. I have never heard of Mackenzie being a member of that golfing society though.

Mackenzie is referenced in a number of Darwin's writings, quite extensively in his 1925 update edition "The Golf Courses of Great Britain" and the various editions of "A Round of Golf on the LNER". Darwin writes in two different articles in Country Life of just having met with his friend Dr Mackenzie, who no doubt got some good publicity out of Darwin's articles on his Australian Tour and his Cypress Point course (thanks to Tom MacWood for those articles).

So my suggestion Darwin put forward Mackenzie to CBGC is just speculation on my part and he could have just as easily recommended Colt or Alison or no-one at all. By 1924 when Mac was beginning his work at CBGC, his partnership with Colt and Alison had been dissolved. Its possible that Mac knew Doyle, but Darwin definiely would have and darwin knew Mac, that was all I was suggesting. The Secretary at CBGC was Frank Holroyd who was a friend of Mackenzie and so of course it is possible that Holroyd was the man who got Mac on board there, with no involvement of Doyle. I am not aware of any specific instances where Darwin recommended an architect, and if he did so, I'm sure he covered his tracks so the others he knew did not get upset with him.

Darwin wrote a number of golf club handbooks for various clubs, but he was by no means as prolific as Robert H K Browning or Tom Scott. So far I know of around 60 clubs that Darwin wrote the course description sections of their handbooks. He almost certainly would have been paid to do these, while he may have done one or two as a favour, possibly for clubs such as Woking and Worplesdon. Darwin was a member of numerous golf clubs and if  he did a favour for all of these he would have been busy indeed working for nothing.

Bob
CD would have known Darwin through the Strand magazine, not Mackenzie.

[Philip Gawith]

Bob - here are some pictures from when i visited just over a year ago....i hope the link works!

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,31924.0.html

[BCrosby]

I seem to remember Conan Doyle designing a golf course in Vermont.  He did teach Rudyard Kipling how to golf in 1894 at CD's course in Vermont.  CD is also credited with invented the game of "snow golf" using red balls.

Rich

I recall something similar. Also Robert Louis Stevenson comes to mind as playing golf in Vermont at about the same time.

Instead of the great courses for any decade, you could do a greatest hypothetical literary golf games of each decade. You've got ACD, RLS, Kipling for that era. Did Bernard Shaw play golf?

The 1930's would be the best. You'd have a hypothetical foursome of Faulkner, Joyce, Beckett and Fitzgerald.

Bob

[BCrosby]

"CD would have known Darwin through the Strand magazine, not Mackenzie."

I stand corrected.

Bob

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