Thorpeness Memories

SUMMER MEETINGS 1908 - 2023

This June, I will drive up the A12 - past Ipswich, over the Orwell Bridge and carry on another 21 miles before I turn right into Friday Street . On seeing the House in the Clouds a few miles later a warm feeling will once again fill my heart, knowing I and those joining me have returned to what over 62 years has become our physical and spiritual home. Memories of all those previous years, of Adnams, of the halfway-house, of Kummel, of heather & bracken, of card schools & snooker and of Noddy's bet all fill my head. Overall recollections of the warmest of times , of smiles and of friends which this year will be our 62nd visit.

Since 1908 there have been 78 Summer meetings that have been recorded, although the Society records for the years covering 1921-1939 were sadly more or less completely destroyed during the Blitz. From the history that we do have, it’s abundanly clear that as befits a Summer break we have nearly always headed towards the seaside for our June & July outings. Woodhall Spa where we played in 1964, was the furthest we headed inland, being 27 miles from the sea. We have played on two courses that have housed the Open (Deal & Princes) but have not moved our base from Thorpeness since 1967

Turning the clock back to 1908 the first ever Summer meeting took place at Royal Cinque Ports Deal on July 9th, some 70 days after the London Olympics at White City had opened - remarkably that year the games lasted until October 31st making them the longest Olympics ever. 2 weeks before the start of the games, Churchill had entered the Cabinet for the first time as President of the Board of Trade. The Summer meeting was the idea of Ambrose Scaramanga of Scaramanga Bros of St Helens Place who single handedly arranged for 40 BEGS members to play a single round at Royal Cinque Ports that summer afternoon - he managed to persuade Southeastern railways to offer the players discounted Third class tickets of 8s 7d each which they had to pay alongside the 5s green fee. The society travelled en masse on the 08:40 from Charing Cross arriving into Deal at 11:56. After the one round they all caught the 18:15 train home arriving back into London at 21:55 , a long day for sure! The records tell us that Mr EE Head won the £5 first prize !! Two weeks later a letter was written to Crowborough Beacon Golf Club about the possibility of a meeting in 1909 but this was never followed up afterwards and the Summer meeting disappeared until it reappears in the 1930’s .

The next registered Summer meeting was 1934 and took place at Rye (used 3 more times with final visit in 1949) and again further along the coast we returned to at Royal Cinque Ports (3 times from 1948 to 1957). Between 1951 & 1966 we expanded from the Kent coastline, making our merry ways to Aldeburgh in 1951, Hayling Island in the 1953 Coronation year, Princes Sandwich in 1954, Sheringham in 1960 , Blatchington, in Sussex 3 times between 1961 and 1966 and finally our one and only trip to Woodhall Spa in 1964, which bizarrely also housed the CEGS fixture that year for the first of ten matches played. Unsurprisingly I have left the most common venue until last!

Our first visit meeting to Thorpeness was on July 12 1952, until last year the last time this country had two monarchs in the same year, it was also the year that a de Havilland Comet became the first jet airliner to take flight, tea rationing was scrapped and Len Hutton was England's first professional cricket captain.

Most of you reading this will have been to Suffolk over many years, the late Robert Bird was our earliest member to have played there when he attended in 1957. For those who dont know the venue, here is a brief background

The small village of Thorpeness is dominated by the Mere, which is popular all year round and bears witness to the village’s fantastical past. In 1910 Stuart Ogilvie bought the hamlet and set to transform it into a private fantasy holiday village. Today the village is just how Ogilvie envisaged it with pretty mock Tudor houses and the fairy-tale ‘House in the Clouds’.

Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie had made his fortune from building railways in Russia and South America during the Edwardian period and from 1910 he began to construct Tudor and Jacobean style houses near the golf course. In 1911 he employed golf course deisgner Harry Colt to create a golf course, but obvioulsy plans for the course were halted by the advent of the Great War. Colt went on to design over 300 courses including Muirfield, Royal Liverpool and Royal Portrush, 3 on the Open circuit. It was not until 1922 that Ogilvie proposed to continue with his plans to expand the facilities in Thorpeness and this time hired five times Open Champion James Braid to finish his dream of having a golf club in the village. By July of that year he had constructed a 10 hole course surrounded by over a million trees planted in and around the entire village - by August of 1923 an additional 8 holes had been added forming basically the course that we love and play nearly one hundred years later. Since 1952, our first visit, there are only 5 holes that differ lengthwise - everybody knows how the bracken and gorse has been cut back over the years, particularly in the last 20 years. So picture these holes if you can - the 3rd is 28 yards longer (the tee was not by the dining room), the 7th is now 30 yards longer (again the tee shot now involves water management), the 9th is of course now a par 5 (some 65 yards longer), the 10th (aiming at Sizewell since 1955) is now 20 yards longer and the tee box has moved constantly, and the last par 3 the 16th is amazingly 33 yards longer, which explains why it remains such a hard hole for our members to negotiate!

The annual membership at Thorpeness in 1922 was £3, which is only £1,177 less that it is today. During WWII, the Clubhouse became a military field hospital and the course was used for tank practice maneouvres whilst obstructions were placed on the fairways to prevent aircraft from landing. Anti-aircraft guns also inflicted damage on the House in the Clouds in 1940!

Formerly a water tower to provide water for the village, the House in the Clouds was the brainchild of Mrs M Mason, a children's story writer, and has become a five bedroom, five storey house. It is also the iconic marker for the golf course as we meander down the 18th fairway (tired and thirsty). On another note the Thorpeness Meare (a boating lake with canoes, punts, rowing boats, sailing boats & kayaks) was inspired by conversations between Ogilvie and JM Barrie who envisaged it as a playground for the Lost Boys in Peter Pan.

Thorpeness's attraction as a resort was heightened when a rail line was opened in 1914, spanning 8 ½ miles between Saxmundham and Aldeburgh - our half way hut although no longer used as such because it was right by the tracks ! The line was closed under the Beeching Report in 1968 and it was only four years later that the properties and Ogilvie empire including the Golf Club was sold.

I am sure that each and every one of us has our own memories of Suffolk summers and we are lucky that the Societies' annals allow me to delve into what is a rich history of 60 years' visits.

For many of the formative years upto the late 1990’s we stayed in the Dolphin Hotel which housed all major meals with the club providing sandwiches and libations aplenty at lunchtimes. As numbers increased hotels (The White Lion) in Aldeburgh, numerous bed & breakfasts and even the odd tent were used and it was only from the late 1980’s that the hotel facilities were extended enough to house us. More recently new rooms above the dining room allow for those unable to walk too far after dinner - only a stair lift remains to be added!

The singles competition was played on the Saturday morning (maybe we should re-introduce this) with the foursomes played in the afternoon. There was a draw during the Saturday dinner for the pairings to apply for the Sunday greensomes.

For anybody over 55 they had to mark their card with a 'V' and extra points were claimed on the basis of half a point for every year exceeding 55 but to a maximum of 5 points - anybody over 70 was allowed 6 points ! Prizes were donated by the winners of the respective trophies from the year before. Each of the 3 rounds involved a cash sweep and I can recall the excitement of the little brown envelopes that accompanied the various prizes. The sweeps have now ceased and it was in the 1990’s that Brian Collins would take on every golfer to the tune of £5 to see if they could better his Stableford singles score. Over the years I would imagine that a gambler as canny as Brian would have shown some form of profit that kept him in Silk Cut for the weekend. Every year a trophy in his name is awarded by the Captain to whoever he considers has made the most telling contribution to the weekend.

So many characters spring to mind when I think of my trips - David Hunt who had to ask his son to rearrange his wedding as he refused to miss his annual Thorpeness trip - Lawrie Castle mistaking a mushroom for a ball - Andy Powell lovingly eyeing up the pigs by the 10th tee , and of course John Madden's hole in one on the 2nd hole in 2014, which I witnessed from the 3rd fairway.

Numbers at the Summer meeting differ greatly over the decades peaking in the 1970’s when nearly 50 people would attend and dipping down to 18 in 2018 - luckily we were back up 30 a year later. We had managed to fill 36 places the year that Covid struck and we had to cancel the meeting. Fortunately the 2023 meeting is already sold out!

There are many tales of people doing their own things in and around the Summer meeting and I vividly recall being taken for fish & chips in Aldeburgh on the Friday evening by David Hunt, probably as i would drive ! For many years there are the tales of the Dozen who intrepidly organised golf weekends to Scotland, France and all over the UK, normally funded by winnings on the Grand National from 1978 onwards. One can safely assume with Powell and Gardner in attendance there was plenty of fluid flowing. Legendary names such as Rabey, Flynn, Cross, Fitzpatrick, Simkins, Biggs, Williams, Powell , Gardner, Pratt and Newman would gather at Thorpeness on the Friday morning and after a cleansing Adnams they were driven to Woodbridge golf club for a lunch, game of golf followed by a lengthy dinner before a minibus back to the hotel. Whilst criticism was voiced about a society within the society the presence of around 20 players kept up the numbers for many years.

Recent years have seen a pleasing growth in numbers of the younger generation allowing the average age to drop and it was a newbie Jonathan Bond that cleared up in 2021 bringing a new name to the podium - not many years ago Mike Randall won the under 40’s competition without having to actually play ! Since 2016 we have even had an annual visitor from Copenhagen in Ulrik Rasmussen and in recent years we were joined by Graham Baldey from Dubai via Madrid as well as Nick Simmons from Australia.

Three trophies dominate the Summer meetings and whilst, as previously mentioned, records between the wars were sadly lost, it is also equally sad that not all records in the last 20 years are complete although we are working on filling in the gaps!

The singles Stableford trophy was presented to the Society in 1972 by Ken Mason in his year as Captain in honour of his father George Mason. It is awarded for the best Stableford score and replaced the Langridge Trophy which first featured in 1958 - this trophy was lost along with three others in 1978 when the Baltic Exchange was burgled. In 1972 in its inaugural year the George Mason Salver was won by David Mason who became the third member of the family to triumph. Over the years Ken Mason has won the singles 4 times and three have won it the 3 times namely Tom Pratt, James Hall and Chris Cox, the latter two gunning for Ken Masons record!!!!

The Eric Faure Cup was presented to the Society in 1958 by ESN Faure and is awarded for the best individual aggregate Stableford score of the Saturday and Sunday foursomes competitions - always played for at Thorpeness bar 4 years the definitive champion of this trophy is Malcolm Stephenson with 5 wins in ten years between 1982 and 1993.

As we can all imagine and envisage many tee shots from the first tee have vanished into the bushes on the right hand side of the fairway and many of us have come close to causing a car crash on the left hand side of the 17th . We have all drunk from the cup of friendship extended over the year by Nevill in the bar and been greeted with a Suffolk smile by Jane and Shirley as we enjoy our kippers of full fat-boy English. We have all had to reload with balls from Frank in the pro-shop, and of course we have all packed the clubs away, paid our bill and shaken hands with old friends, colleagues, ex captains and secretaries, hoping that we will be able to return in a year’s time.

So with our trollies & buggies re-charged we look forward to seeing each other again if not soon , then on the terrace of Thorpeness Golf Club on Friday June 16th when we can once again enjoy the camaraderie and kinship that drives our great Society forward.

So please keep safe, keep your heads down and don’t forget to stop at the Friday Street Farm shop to buy some Suffolk strawberries before you head home down A12.

In memory of all those who are now walking the links elsewhere

Chris Cox

January 2023