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with Peter when he came up to the North East to play in an
Exhibition four-ball. He had inherited his father’s beautifully
simple and orthodox style, but also had the inconsistent putting of
Percy. He demonstrated his sense of humour on the matter by having
the number plate PUT 3 on his Rolls-Royce (These days it can be seen
in the BBC TV compound on his latest Bentley). .
In 1951 I moved to another Durham club, the recently reopened
Beamish Park where I was again honorary part time pro. The course
was laid out in the Deer Park and grounds of Beamish Hall, the
former home of the descendants of Bobbie Shafto, who was MP for
Durham from 1760 to 1768. The history of Beamish Park Golf Club
records that the famous ballad was written for electioneering
purposes and it had a connection with my previous club, Brancepeth
Castle, where there are members of the Shafto family buried in St
Brandon’s churchyard. Bobbie was a Beau Brummel of his day and
Bridget Bellasyse, the heiress to the Brancepeth estate, was said to
have been very much in love with him inspiring the words: -
Bobbie Shafto’s gone to sea,
Silver buckles on his knee,
When he comes back he’ll marry me,
Bonny Bobbie Shafto.
Alas he never did and he married someone else in 1774. Miss
Bellasyse died in the same year – of a broken heart! Her ghost is
said to appear on the battlements of Brancepeth Castle waiting for
Bobby to return home from the sea.
 In my day the clubhouse was the imposing Beamish Hall and I was
allocated a small area in one of the rooms for my pro shop. The club
now has a modern clubhouse and the Hall has become a restaurant and
conference venue.
Henry Cotton designed a course at Beamish, which included a par-5
hole of 605 yards, and much of his work can still be seen on the
rolling hills of the present course. The opening hole was once a
very testing par-3, but this had to be abandoned when too many balls
landed in the adjacent Beamish open air industrial museum. The
award-winning museum, which opened in 1970, is a fascinating tour of
the North East’s industrial history, including coal mining. The
industry has declined to such an extent in the forty odd years since
I left the area that Beamish made the news in 2003 when they were
having great difficulty in finding a qualified ‘Pit Deputy’ to guide
visitors around the site.
Henry Cotton presented Beamish with a club he used in winning the
1937 Open Championship, which was mounted and presented as a trophy.
One of the names on this trophy is Bob Hindhaugh who came to me for
his first lesson. He went on to represent the county and has won the
club championship sixteen times.
Beamish was disbanded during the war and revived in 1950 by a group
that included a G. P. named Dr R. P. Tanham, who was a fanatical golfer
and spent most of his spare time on the course. Pagers and mobile
phones were still a long way off and, in the case of emergency the
flag was raised to alert him or, if he was out of sight of the
clubhouse, the steward would use a loud hailer.
It was on the old course at Beamish that I shot a course record 61,
which was my lowest ever round in competition. Another, rather
bizarre, record was to take place at the clubs’ 174-yard 4th hole in
1981, when 17-year-old Stephen Wightman holed in one - with his
putter!
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