History

Nevertheless, the few early members were soon enjoying twice weekly runs and there is no doubt, many convivial evenings in their first headquarters the Shelley Arms Hotel, in Fishergate, which remained home base until its closure.

As cycling became more “respectable”, so the membership slowly increased, and there is no doubt that the club was given a tremendous impetus by the presence of two outstanding riders, Laurie Clarke (Fig.1- Top) and Sandy Sellars.

Sellars became the club’s first honorary life member in June 1885, having won both the English Championship and the One Mile Championship of Great Britain. Clarke had his competitive cycling career cut short by an attack of typhoid fever, but he, too, was made an honorary member in 1887, became the treasurer, and was elected president of the club as late as 1924.

Part 2 - A Home of Their Own

For 15 years the club had limped along with a small membership of cycling devotees content to enjoy the fresh air and comrade-ship they found on their runs held every Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon. But in 1892 the whole direction of the club changed; after this year, it was never again strictly a cycling club, but it assured its future as a prosperous country club, from which the present Longridge Golf Club is the ultimate development.

In 1890 a sub-committee had been set up to look into the social development of the club, and two years later, with a the membership standing at around 30, they took the plunge by renting a rambling country house known as Broad Fall, at Scorton.

Gradually, the organised cycling runs became less and less frequent. The members were content to ride out to Scorton, and there remain for the weekend enjoying one another’s fellowship. There was much work to be done at Broad Fall to make it a comfortable country retreat for these amiable Victorians- and they did it all themselves. The members represented all walks of life, from joiners to architects and engineers, and all seemed prepared to work tirelessly for the eventual good of the whole.

They carried out extensive alterations to the building, but one of their greatest triumphs must have been the building and installation of an acetylene gas plant, giving them a proper lighting system for the first time. The records do not show whose sense of humour suggested that it should be lit for the first time on Guy Fawkes Night 1908, but 20 years later, the plant was still going strong having been transferred to Fell Barn, Longridge.

Scorton was the original country club, and if it lacked the chromium plate and deep pile carpets of modern versions, perhaps the members derived more true pleasure from it. During the summer, there was swimming in a pool in the river, and according to the seasons, cricket, tennis and football against other clubs.

But of the greatest significance, in view of its future history, was the laying out of a nine-hole golf course on the land around Broad Fall.

Within a year of moving into the house, the membership had doubled, and before long it had been restricted. Many members spent entire weekends at Broad Fall, even took their summer holidays there, and were happy with the outdoor life and the camaraderie of their fellows.

Many were the characters that revelled in the atmosphere of the place during these spacious days. Dick Jolly (Fig.1- Bottom left), who eventually emigrated to Australia, was the house steward and managed Scorton for several years, giving valuable guidance on the interior rebuilding of the old house. Then there were such people as Alf Clemesha, who refused to let his leg interfere with his tennis; Fred Martin, who learned his golf at Scorton and eventually became a scratch player; Will Ord (Fig.1- Bottom right), who became president in 1893 and who still held the reins of office when he died in 1924; Jack Swan, who weighed 30 stone and had to have a specially built bed at Scorton; Harry Heaton, of whom an early chronicler of the club wrote “he was 40 years a member, a capital raconteur, who could make friends at once if you were a Churchman, a good Tory, took a drop of drink, and came from Wigan.” 

And so for 19 years this idyllic existence continued, but in the blazing August of 1911, all the hard work and loving care of so many members was destroyed in the space of a few minutes. The tinder dry thatched roof of Broad Fall caught fire, and the house was burned to the ground.

Early the following year, the club moved its headquarters to another rented house, Inglewhite Lodge, but in the Autumn of 1915, the members were told that their new home was no longer available, and so the search was on again- but with the club’s finances now in a happy state, the committee were determined to buy, rather than rent and so they came to 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.

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. 

But any further plans had to be shelved as the money ran out, and with only about 200 members at the time, there seemed little likelihood of further expansion within the foreseeable future.

However, four years later, John Smith, an accountant, became treasurer of the club, and much of the credit for the subsequent development of the course and clubhouse must go to his diligence and financial expertise. Ten years later he was to lead the golf club into its centenary year as captain

In fact what it took was a lot of hard work by Mr. Smith and Mr. Mowbray. They opened up lines of communication with the Lancashire Playing Fields Association, and after many hours of meetings and a mass of correspondence, an application for a 50% grant was eventually submitted to the North West Regional Sports Council, who were later to make an additional grant of £441- half the cost of laying on a mains water supply to Fell Barn.

At the same time, the members themselves had already embarked on the massive task of raising the additional £6,200 without which the grant could not be approved. Everybody played their part, either by supporting a whole new range of social events in the club, or by organizing “bring and buy” sales and other fund-raising activities, or simply by making a direct loan to the club funds. And so, week-by-week, the development fund grew until the great day that the target had been achieved.

In February 1970 the Regional Sports Council gave final approval to the grant- and now the real work could begin. Within days, the building contractors moved in to start work on the new locker room. The weather was all against them, yet within six weeks the job was completed and ready for the dawning season.

And work began too, on what must have seemed the most mountainous project- the building of the new holes and the reorganization of the existing course. Despite the grant, funds were minimal, and in true Longridge tradition, it was obviously going to be a case once again of “if you want a job doing well, do it yourself”.

There was one job, however, that the members had neither the machinery nor the expertise to tackle- the laying of the new greens. This task was given to a local contractor who also lacked experience, but under the watchful eyes of Ray Birkbeck and greenkeeper John Nicholson the donkey work of laying the basis of the new greens was successfully completed. Meanwhile, almost anybody who could be coerced into lending a hand found himself involved in the shaping of the new course. Working at weekends and in their spare time, the members laid 11 new tees and got down to the back-breaking task of clearing the land of rocks and stones. Not only was the land liberally scattered with rock that would have meant sudden death to the new machinery, but dry stone walls had to be dismantled and carted away.

But little by little, the holes started to take shape, and it must have been with immense satisfaction that the members were eventually able to sit back and rely on the providence of a growing season to complete their labours. Building nine new holes had involved the moving of nearly 6,000 tons of stone, and the laying of nearly 1,000 tons of cinders, nearly 5,000 tons of topsoil, 9,650 square yards of turf and over 8,000-field tiles- as well as a lot of sweat.

August 28, 1971, dawned far from auspiciously with a strong wind and lashing rain. But the weather did nothing to dampen the spirits of the members of Longridge Golf Club and Preston Cycling Club. For this was President’s Day, and it was also the day that the course opened its 18 holes for the first time. It was 5,886 yards long, with a par of 71, and the President, the same Norman Page who had begun the reshaping of the club’s destiny in 1963 and had guided the members through this latest development, and all those others who had worked so hard on the construction of the new course, knew that the club had really come of age. 

Again under the guiding hand of Norman Page, the treasurer pored over the accounts to devise a scheme whereby the extension and modernisation of the clubhouse could be financed to the tune of £25,000. With the help of a brewery loan of £5000 and loans from members, he found a way, and on January 4, 1974, Herbert Forrest’s building workers again moved in.

Five months later, the work was finished, and Dr. Andy Kelly, a trustee of the club and a former captain and president, was able to open the new clubhouse. It now boasted a pleasantly modernised bar with lounge and dance floor attached, as well as a superbly fitted kitchen downstairs, while upstairs, there was a new ladies’ lounge and locker room, a large men’s snooker room, and a bar to serve both men’s and women’s retreats.

It had turned out to be a much larger job than had first been appreciated, for the contractors uncovered so much of the Barn’s original roof timbering that was in such a poor state that the whole area had to be re-roofed. Perhaps, like its predecessor, it will give warmth and protection for another 400 years.

(And so the story is almost complete). Thus from a ramshackle barn and 29 acres acquired by those far-sighted members of Preston Cycling Club for £550 in 1917, there has grown a luxurious clubhouse and an 18 hole golf course that stands on 86 acres of land owned by the members themselves. In 1974, it had an estimated book value of over £170,000