The Addington Golf Club

Laid out in 1913 on a hill nine miles south of central London, The Addington is the only golf course in the world where architects from both great schools worked together, John Abercromby (later of Fowler, Simpson & Croome) with Harry Colt (Colt, Alison, Mackenzie & Morrison).

Ryan Noades, managing director and son of former owner Ron Noades, told the Cookie Jar Golf Podcast (Ep. 258, Aug 2024): “To my knowledge, there doesn't exist anywhere in the world a golf course that was a collaboration between any one of the architects from both schools working together, and this would be the only one.”

Abercromby lived on-site until his death in 1935, watching better players and placing small white markers where balls clustered before adding bunkers, resulting in only 37 bunkers across the course. Noades: “He was a big fan of threes and fives… He really was a half par hero. Almost every one of the holes is a half par hole.”

The 3rd is 210 yards uphill into the wind (“a three and a half”), with aprons that act as run-up areas; the 12th, 185 yards downhill, plays as a gettable short par 4. Tees, greens and bunkers have barely moved in a century.

The routing was designed to start and finish at the clubhouse on the crest of the hill. Today's 5th was the intended opening hole, the 4th the closing one, a gentle handshake, then a stern finish: 560-yard par 5, 410-yard par 3 uphill into the wind, 440-yard par 4. The mounds were built by hand by 700 labourers with buckets before mechanised earth-moving, giving the course its distinctive sharp, angular shapes.

In its golden years it was “Sunningdale before Sunningdale,” with King George VI granting royal patronage in 1937. The Halford Hewitt was conceived over lunch at the club; its first final was played here. After the war, with the second course compulsorily purchased and the clubhouse destroyed by fire in 1952, Moira Fabes inherited control and kept the layout almost untouched for nearly fifty years, watering with a garden hose and rarely cutting trees. That restraint preserved Abercromby's legacy intact.

Frank Pont of Clayton DeVries & Pont has likened it to “finding an old painting in the attic. You need to peel away the layers of dust, but underneath it's a Rembrandt” (Cookie Jar Golf, June 2023).

Jasper Miners of Evalu18 said on a 2020 Cookie Jar podcast: “If you don't know about The Addington now, you will know about it in five years' time because it will be world class. It's a sensational golf course, but because they haven't touched it or messed with it, it's actually right where it needs to be to become world class again.”

Since 2020, Ryan Noades has led a restoration that simply reveals what is already there. “We're not imposing ourselves on it,” he says. “Every time we peel a layer back, it just gets better.” Tree clearance has opened dramatic views, heather is being reintroduced, and the routing Abercromby intended is being reinstated.