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Pennard Golf Club is a links type course situated in an area known as Pennard Burrows which is on top of the cliffs some 200 hundred feet above sea level. The course is on the Gower Peninsula about 8 miles from Swansea. It is the 2nd oldest golf club in Swansea.
Golf was first played at Pennard Burrows in 1896 when Thomas Penrice of Kilvrough, the Lord of the Manor, permitted 20 persons to form the golf club under the leadership of Dr. Edgar Reid, who was a scratch golfer and a losing finalist in the Welsh Championship in 1898. The subscription was 2s.6d, nowadays 12.5p but equivalent to £7 of present day money.
In 1908 his eldest daughter, Lady Louisa Lyons, wife of Admiral Sir Algernon McLenon Lyons, inherited the estate. She permitted a larger and more formal club to be established with rules agreed by her with herself as President.
In order to avoid death duties, the Admiral when he died in 1911, left the estate to his eldest son, Thomas Lyons. He unfortunately died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918 and the estate had to be broken up and sold in 1920. At this date Pennard Golf Club bought the land for £1500, equivalent to £30,000 today, which was a good price then for what was then about 300 acres of steep cliffs and sandy waste.
The course originally was an amateur effort being maintained by the members. About 1908 James Braid was engaged to design the course and was paid a fee of £4.4s (£223) for the first day and £2.2s (£112) for the second day. He continued to visit the course several times, his last visit being in 1931.
The course has its own castle, which is now a ruin. Nevertheless, what is left of it looks very impressive from many different viewpoints as it has a magnificent setting on the cliffs above the winding stream of Pennard Pill and Three Cliffs. It is one of the mysteries of Gower that so very little is recorded about the castle. It was probably built in the late 13th Century but there are doubts if it was ever lived in, or if it was then only for a short time.
The area around the castle was a medieval village with a church but this was gradually covered by sand in the 14th and 15th centuries. Legend has it that this happened all in one night because the Lord of the castle tried to kill the little people, the ‘Tylwyth Teg’, who were making a noise in the fields outside the castle walls. The little people cursed the castle and the wind blew sand from Ireland which buried the castle and somewhere in Ireland there is a big hole!
There is a very small piece of the ruined Church of St. Mary, opposite the Castle between the 7th and 8th fairways, which is of considerable antiquity. It originally was connected with the Monastery of St. Taurin at Evreux in Normandy dated 1195. When the College of All Souls, Oxford was founded in 1441 the revenues of this church were given by Henry VI to the College as part of its endowment.
For the Men’s Section Edgar Reid was a finalist in the Welsh Championship. In the 1920s and 1930s Major Tom Morris and Hubert Davies played golf for Wales and Hubert Davies was a losing finalist in the Welsh Championship in 1932. Hubert Davies, who died in 1995, is the father of the Centenary Captain, John Davies and was Club Champion on 19 occasions despite it being suspended for seven years for the Second World War.
The Ladies Section has had a very good record in the last thirty years. We have had Curtis Cup players in Vicki Thomas and Tegwen Thomas, Sarah Jones and Trish Johnson. Vicki Thomas being a record six times Curtis Cup player and a winner in national and international events on many occasions. Rachel Jennings (member of the English Ladies’ Team). Pennard Ladies were winners of the Welsh Team Championships in 1988, 1993, 1999, 2000 and 2003. Mrs. Josie Roberts and Mrs. Frances Shehan won the Daily Mail Foursomes when in 1992 they became the first Welsh pair to win this event.
Incidentally, our ladies are almost unique in Welsh golf clubs and probably in most golf clubs, in that they were given the vote at A.G.M.s without asking in 1920.
In recent times James Frazer reached the last 8 of the British Amateur at Turnburry 2008 and is a member f the Welsh Team. He holds 6 course records during 2009.