Petersfield Pay & Play Golf

The club itself has no records of those formative days, while The Golfing Annual - the sport's 'bible' of the time - gives conflicting dates. It was stated that many members of the Golf Club were also members of the Cricket Club, and therefore could not be refused the right of using the pavilion. This fact, the Chairman suggested, should tend to reduce the charge to the Golf Club. The golf club's offer of three guineas to use the cricket club's facilities was duly accepted. So there you have it.

By May, 1891, Lothian Bonham-Carter and John Perkin - headmaster of Castle House School in the Square - had formally introduced golf to Petersfield. During the winter months of 1890-91, they laid out a nine-hole course on the northern part of the Heath - on land owned, and provided as a public recreation ground, by John Bonham-Carter, Lothian's elder brother and Lord of the Manor of Mapledurham (the original name for the parish and manor of Buriton).