Reminents of war on the links

[NAF]

I was thinking the other night of the great 4th hole at Rye which is known as the pillbox hole for the gun installations that were placed there to fend off any German attack over the channel...I think I remember Tillinghast writing that he loved golf courses where there were remanents of historical battles etc left on them.. My home course Alpine CC done by Tillie used to have a burned out grist mill on the entrance road.  Alpine is located in Demarest NJ which is named after a miller named Demarest who was hung by the British in the revolutionary war and had his mill burned..It is unfortunate but the club took out the remains...

Can anyone else think of courses that have historical remains from battles on them?

[THuckaby2]

Meadows Farm GC, near Fredricksburg, VA.  Home of what at least used to be the "longest hole."  Civil war jail and cemetery right in play on par 4 on one of the nines... very interesting for this CA boy, not used to civil war stuff.  Maybe that's common in that area???

[Brian Phillips]

Cruden Bay:

Hole 6 - Bluidy Burn - 529 yards

Named after the burn that guards the plateau green, and which ran red with the blood for seven hours, of those slain on the battlefield of 1012.

The classic and traditional story of the Battle of Cruden as it appears in Bellenden's Chronicle is now open to some doubts. It tells of how in 1012, King Svend, or Sueno, together with his more famous son Knut or Canute afterwards King of England, Denmark, Norway and part of Sweden - did battle with the Scottish army of Malcotm 11 "in a plain at the bottom of the Bay of Ardendraught". (This was the old name given to the Bay of Cruden near which the Danes had a castle.) 
Taken from a poem on the history ofthe Battle of Cruden we read such details as: 

"Three hundred oxen here they did prepare, And roaring bulls, which they with cautious care Oid keep in secret all day before, Within a den three miles from shore: Their horns they did busk with flax and tar ange unusual art of war..." 

(Having set fire to the cattle's horns, King Matcolm then drove them into the enemy's camp at day break.) 
"... Tradition says the Danes had on the field Full twenty thousand men with sword and shield; While on the Cruden Muir Malcolm drew Up fifteen thousand valiant men and true, Well trained to war, and hardened in the field ..." 
and of the battle itself, the story goes: 

"Ten thousand of the Danes the Scots did slay; Their royal prince lay on the Cruden shore, Among the dead, to vex the Scots no more ... ... Saint Olla's burn, for more than seven hours, O'erflowed with blood, which blasted all its flowers ... ... The human blood in torrents vast did pour, Which long continued in a putrid state, Expressive ofthe base mvaders' fate ..." 

The Danes were defeated, but not dishonourably so, and on the day after the battle the two sides came together and made a four point peace treaty. The Danes and their allies were to withdraw entirely from Scotland. In return, Malcolm and Svend were to become allies and never to fight one another again. The field of battle was to be consecrated as a burial place, and both the Scots and Danes were to have honourable burial. 


Interesting stuff..

In the book bought at the club called A century og golf at Cruden Bay.

[Pete_Pittock]

Royal West Norfolk (Brancaster) has a pillbox next to the clubhouse and others along the shore.

[Paul Turner]

NAF

Burnham and Berrow still has a pillbox on its 10th hole.  The dive is blind over a dunes and as I remember, the pillbox is the other side of the dune.

How about the Martello towers at Felixstowe Ferry?  I think these date back to the Napoleonic wars.  I've got a scanned pic of these, I'll post it.

And of course there's Painswick with its Iron Age fort and  Minchinhampton Common has a couple of holes routed around a large long barrow (probably Iron Age too).

[RJ_Daley]

I remember reading that the Biarritz Club in France was pretty torn up by shelling or bombs dropped during WWII.  Before learning otherwise some years ago, I thought Biarritz hole meant something about random pockmarked bunkering throughout the design named after a shelling barrage.  Maybe there are some new bunkering schemes to be found in Tora Bora?

[Richard_Goodale]

Noel

There are remnants of pillboxes on a lot of the courses near the Firth of Forth (e.g. Anstruther, Burntisland, Aberdour) as the German bombers heading for the Clydeside shipyards and steel mills near Glasgow would head in over the Forth from the North Sea.  The airfield in the middle of Turnberry and the tank traps on the shore at Gullane are two other well known examples.  I understand that one of he bunker complexes on hte 18th at Sunningdale old was made out of a WWII bomb crater.  I'm sure there are many. many more, and I'll try to think of them!

[Evan Fleisher]

Although not directly incorporated into the links, how about all of the anti-tank cement barricades still in place around the perimeter of Gullane's Course #1?

These monsterous cement "cubes" ladened with steel are the remnants of World War II, and Scotland's attempt at turning back any chance of the enemy bringing tanks onto their soil.

Quite a stunning site during our second round in Scotland, and truly interesting to see such history while playing the game.

If anyone is interested, please Email me and I can send you a few pictures of them.

[BCrosby]

I've been told by several sources that a large revetment running along the right side of the 8th fairway at East Lake was built by the Confederates during the Battle of Atlanta.  Sherman encircled the city and one of his main thrusts was from the east, towards town, right through what is now East Lake.

The revetment came into play for pushed drives off the tee.  People have claimed they used to find old military buckles and musket balls balls in the rough on that part of the course.  

Among other inspired changes he made to East Lake in the early 1990's ,  Rees Jones had the old revetment removed.

Bob

[SPDB]

The entire course at Carnegie Abbey (another of deSavary's clubs, sister to Cherokee, and Skibo) is played entirely over a Revolutionary War battle site - The Battle of Rhode Island. A brook that runs through the property was named Bloody Run Brook, after the ferocity of the fighting. Interspersed throughout the norteast section of the course are rudimentary headstones which mark the ad hoc graves of the Hessian soldiers that fought in this battle.

The Battle was one of the fiercest of the war, and it is most significant for the inclusion of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, the first battalion of black soldiers to fight under the American flag. In pitched battle they repelled the hessian and british forces that had occupied Aquidneck Island for over a year.

The yardage book gives tidbits of history for each hole, making the round a pretty good historical lesson, in addition to a fairly challenging round of golf.

[jim_lewis]

Just beyond the 8th green and to the right of the 9th tee at the Cape Fear Country Club in Wilmington, NC are the remains of part of earthworks that were built to provide a perimeter defense for the city of Wilmington in the event of an attack by the Yankees in the American Civil War. There is a monument behind the 8th green commenorating those earthworks.  Too bad the club hasn't done as good of job in preserving the Donald Ross golf course.  I think they have retained Tom Doak, but I don't think it is possible to restore the 18th green and the 10th hole which were sacrificed in favor of a practice area and a parking lot.  Maybe Tom or Walker Taylor IV can tell us about their plans for the course.

[Tom_Egan]

Quite a few years ago I played in the 2nd annual inter-club match between Baltusrol and Walton Heath, at their club.
(I suppose this home and home match continues, but don't know for sure).  As we approached one of the greens early in our first practice round, one of our British hosts commented that ahead was a bunker that occupied a major depression dug out by the Normans for the shelter of their horses during their invasion of England centuries before, and that there were a number of other instances of these on their two courses.  After our "OOh's" and "AAhs" and a few comments and questions, one of the local caddies ventured how foresighted the Normans were to place these excavations near the greens where their strategic value was the greatest.

My American partner and I were probably foreign sucker team # 3,649 for this patter, but it was pretty amusing at the time.  And the part about the Normans digging the pits WAS true.

[Paul Turner]

In a similar vein, the most interesting relics I've ever seen on a golf course are the ancient Mogal monuments and tombs scattered over The Dehli Golf Club.

I walked several of the holes and it's a good course: good enough to get into The World Atlas of Golf (redesigned by Peter Thomson).

[Tony Ristola]

Military cemetary.  WWII if I remember correctly...to the right of the landing area at the uphill 12th, Gorge Vale GC, Victoria, British Columbia.

[Jeff_Brauer]

BCrosby,

I wonder if Rees would be allowed to remove the revettment if it was historical?  I know when Bob Cupp did Marietta CC, right on Sherman's path, the project was held up a bit, as the local historical guys wanted those types of things preserved.

I have done three courses in Sherman's path from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and found some remnants on each.  There is a revetment at the end of the range at the Legacy at Windy Hill Road.  If you play Brookstone, the valley in front of the 4th green was the original Burnt Hickory Road, which in May 1864 carried all 100,000 of Sherman's Union troops to Kennesaw and beyond.  The road was so narrow that I thought it was just an early century logging road.  

That really woke me up to how much smaller scale things were back then, to think something 10 foot wide was the major road in the area 140 years ago.  As I have said before (shameless attempt to talk about golf design a little) that showed me that golf courses aren't the only thing that have gotten larger in scale.

We also found wagon wheels and "minie" ball around the course.  Even in 1987, when we built the course, locals said it was not too unusal to find bones or artifacts surface in a rainy spring.

As you can tell, I got into the history of the area when there.  One day the historical guys came out, and could pinpoint from there metal detector findings exactly where union and confederate soldiers stood.  To paraphrase the caddy in England - it looked like they were fighting for control of our 13th fairway!  

Also, we looked at old maps, overlayed with new ones, and felt that the army of the Ohio crossed its cannons near the proposed site of our 14 th green.  When we hacked through the dense thicket to the green site, there was a natural rock bridge over Pumpkinvine Creek right where the old maps said the cannons went!  We preserved it next to the green as a feature, only to have it blown out by the sewer engineers a few years later when the housing reached that area.

I also wondered how anyone could get a self respecting battle going in that terrain.  It appeared to me that the first twenty minutes of shooting was the equivalent to the "clearing crew", shooting all the pines down so they could get a good look at the enemy!

[BCrosby]

Jeff -

It's amazing how many traces of the Civil War can still be found in Atlanta.  

The land my house sits on, for example.  From overlay maps we found at the Kenesaw Battlefield Museum, we discovered that the rise on which my house is located was built as a battery emplacement for the 1st Ohio Artillery.  We expanded the back of the house about 10 years ago and found a small caliber cannon shell about 4 feet underground.  There is so much of that stuff around that the Atlanta History Center wasn't even interested in seeing it!

Just behind our house there is a swale that runs along the northeast side of Peachtree Street (just north of Piedmont Hospital).  It was dug by the Army of the Cumberland (yankee invaders).  From that swale, supported by artillery roughly where my house is, Sherman attacked down the hill to Peachtree Creek, now called Peactree Battle Creek after the battle that took place there.  It was the opening skirmish of the the Battle of Atlanta.

The next day McPherson (a Sherman lieutenant) successfully attacked the city from farther south and east, through roughly where East Lake is now.  

Soon thereafter the city surrendered and the pilaging, looting and burning began.  

(Interestng side note is that McPherson died in that battle.  In one of the biggest in-your-face gestures of all time, the US Army base established in ATL after the was was given the name Fort McPherson.)

[Jeff_Brauer]

Bob,

Those overlay maps are fascinating!  Just a different type of research.

When we did Centennial up in Acworth, it didn't have a any landmarks, but I couldn't help marching some folks up to what is now the seventh tee, and telling them that it was a surveillance post that Sherman himself used to plot troop movements.  I then asked if they knew the famous Sherman quote uttered from here.  When they bit, I would say "Looks like a good place for a tee."

But I have those Atlanta campaign overlay ;maps, and have been all over atlanta trying to get a sense of what and where in the Battle for Atlanta.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I also visited the famous "Dead Angle" in Kennesaw, where the Union charged two confederate lines angling together, not apart, which can concentrate powerful fire on the attacking army.

Until then, I thought the dead angle referred to a tee shot too far into the woods on a dogleg!

[Peter Galea]

Huge concrete "bunkers" are scattered throught the property at Mare Island Golf Course in Vallejo, Ca. Robin Nelson has just added an additional nine. One bunker is used for the maintenance building, another is going to be turned into a halfway house.
On the flats just off the property are several which housed ordinance's. Atop the hill (hidden from the public) is a monument which displays "tags" of all the submarines which were built at the shipyard, included is the tag for the Nautilus. "Burned" into the base of this monument are stencils of various tools used for assembling the subs. Pretty cool. I'll try to post some photos tonight.

[BCrosby]

Jeff -

Yes, those maps are addictive.  After looking at them for a while you start to think every landform in the city must tie back to the Civil War somehow.  It turns out they do, more often that you might think.

I didn't know you had done so much work in Atlanta.

In addition to Brookstone and Centenial, what other are the courses you have worked on here?  I heard that changes were made to Centenial in the last 7/8 years.  Is that right?  I'd love to get out and see your work.    

Bob    

[wsmorrison]

I believe there was a civil war army hospital set up on the grounds of Philadelphia CC, near #16 and along the pre-revolutionary stone wall that separates the original Flynn 18 from the forgettable new 9.

[JohnV]

I remember playing at my uncle's course, Rochford Hundred in Essex, England back in the '60s.  It was built right next to an RAF airstrip and had lots of concrete bunkers on the course as well as a number of hollows that were old bomb craters.  My uncle told me that they still occasionally came across an unexploded bomb in the area.  You definitely didn't want to talk big divots.

[Daryl "Turboe" Boe]

My club near Greenville, SC is called Musgrove Mill GC.  It is named after the Revolutionary War battle of Musgrove Mill which was fought throughout the valley that the course now covers.  There is a historical marker on a hillside outside the gates of the course (visible from the 11th green).  I do not know the exact history but I understand that the battle was a protracted one waged over the exact ground that is now the course.

I do not have the list, but there is a name for each of the holes named for a Revolutionary War battle, and I have been told that during construction buckles, ammunition, and remnants were found on the course.

Each year one of the more fun tournaments that we have out there is called "The Battle" at Musgrove Mill.  Everyone that signs up is put into a pool, and the two lowest handicaps become the captians of the Blue and the Red teams and select their teams.  We thought about making the Red team actually wear "redcoats" in order to give the Blue side an advantage.  We wouldnt want to have the Red team win too often.  A single long table is set up on the balcony overlooking the 18th green and the loosing team must sit facing the clubhouse wall as a view.  While the winning team looks over their vanquished opponents to the view of the course in the valley below.  Also the loosing team picks up the dinner tab and entry fee for the victors.

[Stan Dodd]

Though not in play, the periscope on the first tee at Elie is a great relic feature.

[Peter Galea]

Here are some photos from Mare Island Golf Course.


Bunker behind the 10th (Robin Nelson) green.


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