Royal North Devon Golf Club

Royal North Devon occupies the wide, windswept common of Northam Burrows at Westward Ho!, overlooking Bideford Bay on the North Devon coast. Founded in 1864, it is England’s oldest existing golf course and one of the most important sites in the history of English golf. Old Tom Morris was brought to Westward Ho! during the course’s formative years, and the present layout still occupies the original linksland, shared with grazing sheep and horses and protected today as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The course is remarkable for how little it resembles a manufactured modern links. The fairways run naturally through the burrows, with low dunes, tidal burns, rough grass and great expanses of open ground providing the hazards rather than elaborate earthworks. Firm, fast-running turf and a stiff Atlantic breeze make club selection and ground play particularly important, while the absence of obvious visual definition can make individual holes surprisingly difficult to read. Several original greens remain from the early course, while Herbert Fowler's subtle improvements between 1908 and 1911 helped shape much of the layout seen today. The result is golf in its most natural form: exposed, unpredictable and deeply connected to the landscape on which the game first took hold in England.