The Course

Addington Palace Golf Club occupies the heathland and woodland of the Addington Hills — ground that falls within the Greater London boundary but feels entirely removed from it, a landscape of heather, bracken and ancient oaks that provides the setting for one of J.F. Abercromby’s most imaginative and individual designs. Abercromby created three courses in the Addington area in the early 20th century; Addington Palace, opened in 1931, is the least celebrated of the three but arguably the most interesting.

The layout winds through mature woodland with a routing that uses the natural contours and vegetation to create a sequence of holes of remarkable variety and character. The course plays to a par of 72 and stretches to around 6,400 yards — the length is modest, but the accuracy demanded by the tree-lined fairways and the complexity of the greens make the scoring more difficult than the numbers suggest. Abercromby’s designs are known for the way they reward the player who understands the line and the ground, rather than the one who simply hits it furthest.

What makes Addington Palace genuinely special is the atmosphere — walking these fairways through the London woodland, with the heather in bloom in late summer and the oaks casting long shadows across the ground, produces a sense of remove from the city that is remarkable given how close the M25 actually is. This is golf as sanctuary, in one of London’s most unexpected green spaces.