News FeedA Brief History
The Royal Eastbourne Golf Club was founded in 1887, the year Queen Victoria celebrated her Gold Jubilee, and following patronage by her grandson, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence. The title Royal was conferred by the Queen on 27th October 1887, and it is believed that our club became the quickest to achieve such honoured status from foundation. Of all the Royal clubs we are the 12th most senior, a number of older clubs having obtained such status after the REGC, and some having since been disbanded.
The land on which the course is laid out is leased from the Chatsworth Estate and the Duke of Devonshire who is the Club's President, and a small part from Eastbourne Borough Council. There are two courses at The Royal Eastbourne Golf Club. The Par 70, 18 hole Devonshire Course, and The Hartington Course, a Par 32, 9 hole course.
The Hartington Course, usually referred to by members as the 'Short Course', was originally the new Ladies' course which was built to replace the original that laid out in the area now occupied by the two blocks of flats known as 'Linkswood' situated alongside the 17th hole.
Until October 1933, The Royal Eastbourne Ladies Golf Club was a separate entity and although the men agreed to a merger in 1934, with subscriptions set at five guineas for men and four guineas for ladies, the Ladies Club were deeply divided on the question of amalgamation. The Ladies voted 71 to 41 to remain independent from the men, but within a year 43 of the ladies had joined the Ladies Section of The Royal Eastbourne Golf Club and the death knell of the RELGC was sounded. It survived only a further four years until 31st August 1937. The Ladies Club obtained Royal status separate to the men through the patronage of Her Royal Highness, The Duchess of Fife, in December 1893. The Duchess was the third child of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. The Ladies Club was the first in Sussex and one of the first ten in England and they were founding members of the L G U.
It is of interest to note that a visitor's green fee in 1914 was the princely sum of 2/6d per day.
Since 1887, The Royal has had a number of famous members, its earliest being H G Hutchinson who won the Amateur Championship in 1886 and 1887. He finished 10th in the 1892 Open at Muirfield having led by three strokes after 36 holes. Ironically 1892 was the first year the Open Championship was extended from 36 to 72 Holes. Hutchinson also had a huge influence in the design and layout of the original course at The Royal.
Another winner of the Amateur Championship in both 1920 at Muirfield and in 1929 at Royal St Georges was Cyril Tolley, also famed for losing at the 19th by a 'stymie' to the legendary Bobby Jones in 1930, the year that Jones achieved the Grand Slam of Open and Amateur Championships in both Britain and the USA.
The Royal is proud to have a Prime Minister amongst its former members. A J Balfour, who was Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905 and during the 1914-1918 War, was 1st Lord of The Admiralty and then Foreign Secretary. In 1894 he was appointed Captain of the R&A, the first of four members of the The Royal to be so honoured. The others were H G Hutchinson in 1908, Angus Valdemar Hambro of the famous Banking family in 1928 and Cyril J H Tolley in 1948.
For more interesting facts and stories about The Royal, a very good read is 'A History of The Royal Eastbourne Golf Club 1887 - 1987' by John T Milton (Club Captain 1984).
