An element of vitality
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (232) finds that the resort’s first golf course played an important role within the resort’s tourist and local economy. Sir George Meyrick, the Lord of the Manor, had, in effect, donated the area to the town, a contribution commemorated in the course’s name: Meyrick Park. At the course’s grand opening (1894), Mayor Russell Cotes, watched Mrs Meyrick, Sir George’s daughter-in-law, drive off the tee. She ‘handled the club in a really smart manner’, employing ‘a very clean shot’. The Bournemouth Guardian acknowledged the course’s importance to the resort by extending almost a whole page to the opening. Within six months after opening, over 4,000 people had visited the links. Later accounts suggest that the course became profitable for the Council.
Victorian Bournemouth (232): background
Golf, the new thing
As whisky before, golf journeyed south to make a substantial impact on English society. During the late Victorian period, golf courses multiplied in England at a fast rate. Councillor J. H. Moore thought that Bournemouth should join the trend. He ‘urged … for enquiries all round for any ground … for there was, in his opinion, an element of vitality for the future of Bournemouth in the question’. Moore and others understood the game’s appeal for gentry and leisured people, still an important target for Bournemouth’s tourist marketing. The game interacted with a longer-term social trend then peaking. Both men and women could play the game. The new handicap system enabled them to play together as well. Thus, golf echoed the changing place of women in society that would soon change politics. Such a popular game, therefore, corresponded well with Bournemouth’s reputation as the pre-eminent venue for leisured people.
Battle for the links
Councillor Moore’s call for action, while endorsed by his colleagues, raised the difficult question of location. Members and visitors would not want to travel far from town to reach the course. On the other hand, the appropriate amount of land available by this stage in the town’s development had shrunk. The process waded through legal ‘shoals and quicksand’, according to the local press. ‘Nobody will demand a litteratim account of the legal formalities, the Chancery proceedings, the referends, the disputations, the arbitrations, and the decisions.’ Little-known turbary owners had to discharge their rights in return for compensation. The Meyricks, the largest local land proprietor and Lord of the Manor, initiated the process by giving up rights on a suitable piece of land. To fund the course’s development, the Council embarked on a process perhaps more familiar, for they sold plots at the edge. Tom Dunn, course designer, acted as consultant.
Victorian Bournemouth (232): the players
Three clubs
Despite no local course, a town golf club had come into existence around 1890. The members secured access to land near Brockenhurst, lying within the New Forest. While the Council’s lawyers stumbled through the legal undergrowth, the club held regular medal meetings at Brockenhurst. Train travellers stared at men clad in golf garb, clutching club bags, as they got off at Brockenhurst station. Once the links at Meyrick Park opened, another local club, this time eponymous, attracted press attention. Although such local dignitaries as E. W. Rebbeck, plutocrat and mayor, joined, this club may not have enjoyed the same social level as the Bournemouth Golf Club. Tom Dunn placed a nine-hole course, involving less complexity, at the centre of the eighteen holes. This became home to the Bournemouth Ladies’ Golf Club. Thus, by the middle of the decade, the resort had an established infrastructure of clubs, courses, and competitions.
Social profile
Press listings of competition results provide clues as to the type of people who drove their golf balls across Meyrick Park. In several cases, the addition of titles places the individuals within society without the need for further information. Thus, amongst the male golfers, there featured clergymen, physicians, and army officers. Comparison of the medal rankings with the local census offers further guidance on club members’ social position. Several solicitors competed for honours, as did an estate agent. Others gave the census enumerator their occupation as provided by indirect earnings. The E. W. Charlton, who participated, may equate with the established painter. Based at Ringwood and Lymington, he found Bournemouth’s course and club had sufficient attraction for the visit. Identification of female players proves less certain, but their surnames in some cases suggest that the club attracted family members. Most retained their spinster status, but a few married women played.
Victorian Bournemouth (232): new jobs
Caddies
Winton, as the nearest pool of labouring people, supplied the course with staff, most numerous the caddies. Teenage boys, born and living in Winton or Moordown, carried the bags. They sprang from labouring households. Most of the golfers consisted of the gentry or other leisured folk. Their caddies, therefore, all younger than them, occupied a far inferior social position. The relationship on course perhaps lay more in providing clubs rather than local knowledge. The club’s social standing would have perhaps required the boys to wear presentable clothes, requiring some capital. Most disappeared from the records, but most of the rest followed their fathers into manual labour as adults. George Adams (b. 1888), however, became a golf professional, by 1911 moving to Eastbourne in the same job. Alfred Sharp (b. 1885) stayed local, becoming a golf professional, then, by 1911, a clubmaker. Thus, golf at Bournemouth helped them improve their position.
Other staff
Adults employed by the club either worked in the pavilion or on the course. Frederick Burden (b. 1863) kept the greens in 1901. Later, he left the course to work on house gardens. Robert Dicker (b. 1872), the club’s horseman, would have hauled around cutting and other equipment. Thereafter, Dicker worked as a carrier, then managed The Red Lion pub, located in Christchurch. Harriet Allen (b. 1865), a porter’s wife, acted as stewardess at the club but had left this post by 1911. One other employee, Herbert Curtis (b. 1878), a Coastguard’s son, built a substantial reputation within local golf. In 1901, he managed the course; thereafter, he made clubs. His obituary (1917) recorded that he ‘took charge of the whole of golfing in the borough’. This included Queen’s Park. Also, he laid out Swanage’s course. Analysis of their fathers’ jobs places them higher in society than the caddies.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (232) notes that Meyrick Park, the resort’s first golf course, boosted the local economy by attracting gentle folk and leisured people to the new sport of golf. This supported tourism and promoted Bournemouth’s fashionable image. It also provided jobs, bringing income and an opportunity for social improvement to local working people.
References
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