History of Longridge Golf Club & Preston Cycling Club

Part 3 - The Move to Fell Barn, Longridge

At the time that the members of Preston Cycling Club were casting their net for suitable headquarters, the early stalwarts of Longridge Golf Club were already braving the sometimes-rugged elements to be faced on their little nine-hole course a thousand feet up on Longridge Fell. Their accommodation was Spartan, their “clubhouse” being no more than a small wooden hut standing close to where the machinery sheds are today.
The golf course was certainly no place for the soft or the infirm, for at the time, there was still evidence of a campsite where troops had been sent during the 1850’s to harden them to unremitting climatic conditions they would shortly have to endure in the Crimea.

The golfers, evidently, had not enough funds to buy their own course, nor the adjoining ramshackle old barn, which, despite the need of major renovation, would have made an ideal clubhouse. So the subsequent events of 1916, with the Preston Cycling Club’s sally into the property market, must have seemed a godsend to them. They quickly appreciated that they were in no danger of eviction, for right at the outset it was made clear that the two clubs would amalgamate.

On March 9, 1917, William Ord, Gilbert Starkie and Laurie Clarke signed their names to the deeds, and for the princely sum of £550, Preston Cycling Club acquired Fell Barn and 29 acres of land. The modern history of Preston Cycling Club and Longridge Golf Club, as it was known until the early 1960’s, had begun.

Fig 3

The barn’s history went much further back. It had been used as a secret meeting place where Catholics held Mass during the Cromwellian prosecutions of the 1650’s, and a deed of 1799 refers to a “dwelling house, weaving shop, shippon and hay roost” which were let for 18 guineas a year- although the owner, a Mr John Bradley, was also liable to an annual Land Tax of 3s. 4d.

But run-down the building certainly was, and it was only the freely given labour of those same members who had done so much work at Scorton that eventually transformed it into a reasonably comfortable clubhouse. The barn-like appearance of the exterior soon gave way to a double bay-windowed front with a spacious porch, and the interior was opened up by knocking down a two-foot thick wall that had separated the barn from the shippon.

For 40 years, the pioneers of Preston Cycling Club had proved the point that the best help is self-help, and they stuck manfully to their allotted tasks in the sure knowledge that their united effort would benefit all. When they had finished, they had created a typically masculine atmosphere in which the Women’s Libbers of the time- the suffragettes- would have no place.

The cycling days were gone, but not forgotten. Though the only Cycles to be seen were those used by some of the members to the reach the club- and each year more and more of them were being replaced by the car- there were plenty of photographs and items of nostalgia to remind the older generation and educate the younger of the kind of men who had founded the club in 1877.

But Fell Barn served the same purpose and recreated the same atmosphere as Broad Fall had before the fire. It became a country retreat where members could spend the entire weekend in each other’s amiable company and enjoy a variety of pursuits. But not unnaturally, since the golf course was already laid out, it was the golf that rapidly became established as the centre point of these weekend parties.

During the 1920’s, as many as 30 members could be accommodated in the clubhouse on the Saturday night, and for tea and supper on Saturday, a bed for the night, early morning tea in bed on Sunday, followed by breakfast, lunch and tea the charge was 7s. 6d. (37½ pence today).

And so the leisured existence might have continued but for the Depression of the 1930’s and the war, after which the club lost its status as a residential country club, and became simply a small, and not particularly fashionable, golf club in the more commonly accepted form.

The club soldiered on its simple way, living very much from hand to mouth, and without causing too much of a ripple in Lancashire golf circles. And then came 1963.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 4 / Part 5