Painswick Golf Club

Painswick Golf Club features an 18-hole course atop Painswick Beacon, within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. As Sam Williams noted on the Cookie Jar Golf Podcast (Ep. 95, Dec 2021): "David Brown, famous from our Musselburgh film...was working as a professional down at Cleve Hill. Given the proximity of the two courses, he's accredited with the design."

Brown laid out Painswick and, as Dye Thomas explained in Ep. 203 (Jun 2023), "taught Queen Victoria to play the game of golf perhaps" – and later "died penniless in the States after the great depression."

Tom Mills told the podcast: "That whole stretch of golf up there is still so raw. It's not in any way USGA... but it's just still very raw and basic. You can imagine how golf was." He added: "David Brown starts the golf course down at the bottom, at the lowest point you could possibly be. For six holes, getting up that hill – it's a great experience."

At 5,000 yards and par 67, the course incorporates Iron Age fort terrain affecting the 5th, 6th, 7th, 10th and 11th holes.

A later episode summed it up: "Painswick – it's so good. It's like a way better version of a sort of Prestwick, a Painswick for the quirk value. It's been a little bit more refined. The features are as provocative, but it plays as a fairer challenge."