Grounds for concern: Rudding Park as it used to be before it was converted into a golf course
Posted on 07/05/2008 4:38:50 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The spread of golf courses threatens Britain's traditional landscapes, a report from the leading conservation authority will warn this week.
The sport's growing popularity has led to dozens of important parks being turned into 18-hole courses, leading to what English Heritage claims is "irreversible damage to the historic environment".
Grounds for concern: Rudding Park as it used to be before it was converted into a golf course
The warning comes as the organisation prepares to launch the first comprehensive register of the country's neglected historic treasures this week.
Its "Heritage at Risk" report will identify listed buildings, monuments, churches, battlefields and even shipwrecks that it believes are in jeopardy, and discuss what can be done to preserve them.
The survey, the first document of its kind to include parks, gardens and landscapes, will warn that golf courses are frequently being imposed on the landscape in an "alien and insensitive" way.
English Heritage found that:
** 116 historically important parks in the South East alone have been converted into golf courses since the 1980s
** Golf course developments are damaging scheduled monuments, archaeological remains and the setting of listed buildings
** The gardens and landscape of stately homes and country houses are particularly at risk.
The warning comes amid the row over a plan by the American billionaire Donald Trump to build a £1 billion golf resort on one of the most unspoilt stretches of Scottish coastline. This are the subject of a planning inquiry.
English Heritage says that some settings can never be suited to the intensive building and landscaping necessary to build fairways, tees, bunkers and clubhouses.
Among the examples given is Rudding Park, near Harrogate. The park and gardens were created in 1788, when Lord Loughborough commissioned Humphry Repton to
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Sad—but better building golf courses on historic land than “housing estates” (what the British call public housing).
I recall reading where a Scottish King back around 1600 banned Golf because the men were wasting their time playing it instead of training for war.
Protect them Bugs, they may be next...
I didn’t realize Moslems played golf that much.
I once stayed in a nice hotel in London and soon found I was one of a few "heretics" in the place. The hotel was owned by very wealthy Kuwaitis. Most residents were muzzies too and and room service meant they would get a daily cart load of barbecued chicken delivered to the females of the tribe. The ladies' outings were to Harrods and other $$$ posh places and they went in a parade of Rolls Royce limos. The young guys drove Ferraris and they all gave me my quota of dirty looks.
Shortly after, we saved Kuwait from the nasty Saddam. Go figure! Gee, I wonder if Kuwait is now showing their gratitude by sending us some cheaper oil? The media and the RATs all told us so. Naaaahhhhh! I thought that the Iraq war was all about oil. If so, where's our cut?
Was it Mark Twain, who said,
“Golf is the one thing, which can ruin a good, long walk.” ?
Okay, I forgot where I was going with that quote. Sorry.
$65 for round of golf or a tank full of gas...hmmm......
sorry, my golfing days are just about over.
It is a sport for the rich anymore.
I’ve been advocating for years now that our cemeteries get converted into golf courses. I’ve always felt that cemeteries are a waste of space and most cemeteries would make excellent golf courses as they already have those little narrow strips of road that are perfect for golf carts. Just remove all those unsightly gravestones, plant some grass seed and viola! Instant golf course.
Taking property that was paid for and belonged to the public and giving it away to a private developer is the modus operandi of the internationalists whose specialty is looting domestic economy and infrastructure from the public. They come in and corrupt local officials who then forsake the law and ethics to provide them with the properties they are seeking.
If it is a public/ private partnership to develop these properties, well then that is unabashed fascism at work.
Let’s not defend these crooks and their corruption, let’s put them in jail instead, eh?
Agreed, but is that what is happening here? I had rather formed the impression that this trend was the responsibility of people who owned large tracts of land, could not get subdivisions and other developments built on it, and did not want to pay taxes on what was basically just a lot of decorative grass, so they decided to make the big house into a hotel or club. Am I wrong? I have seen this happen quite often in the UK.
“Carl, I want you to kill all the gophers on the golf course!”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers they’ll lock me up and throw away the key.”
“Not golfers, you great git! Gophers! The little brown, furry rodents!”
“We can do that. We don’t even need a reason.”
“Aye! Well do it, man!”
“OK, but why don’t we do the same thing, but with gophers?—It’s not my fault nobody can understand you.”
Tax the old families until they can't afford to keep their historic properties. The problem with "soak the rich" is that old country houses immediately pass out of private ownership. Either that, or they're razed to avoid paying taxes.
John Harris was discovering abandoned country houses all over Britain as early as the 40s. People just walked away.
The few that survived were taken over by the government or purchased to turn into tourist attractions. (There was one enterprising soul, the Duke of Bedford, who turned his own mansion into a tourist attraction, complete with safari park and lord knows what else. But he kept it. He must be dead now, and I have no idea what happened to the ownership of the place.)
NOW they're complaining about "spoiling" the estates, when the government did more to destroy them than any private owner could.
The only way you could make a place like Rudding Park pay enough to keep it up would be by turning into something -- and a golf course with its expanses of green lawn is NOT that far off a Repton landscape (he liked the open views with clumps of trees).
“Golf is a good walk spoiled,” I believe, is the quote.
I kind of agree with him. I remember the complaints about the Japanese building a bunch of golf courses in Hawaii too.
Britain will need that land for all the new mosques.
I love chasing that little white ball around a well landscaped tract of land. Pure serenity to me. I played twice at the Hyatt in Cambridge, Md and 3 times in Telluride, Co just in the past twelve days. Life sucks doesn’t it...Telluride could use a little more oxygen though:-)
Right you are, sir. Much better and 100% more accurate. Thx.
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