Golf in London

Blakes is a golf club with an 18 hole golf course established in 2005 and situated in North Weald, Essex. North Weald is an area North West of Greater London, a short drive along Epping road (A414) headed toward Chelmsford from Junction 7 of the M11. Well known for its airfield and market.

Blakes Golf Club
Epping Road
North Weald
Epping
Essex
CM16 6RZ
Tel. (01992) 525 151

Whilst in development, Blakes was called Ongar Park Golf Course and was built on part of the land previously used by the Ongar Radio Transmitting Station. The Club was developed by a company called UK Golf and Leisure Ltd, who commissioned Swan Golf Design to design the course. Their principal architect, Howard Swan, is credited with the design. UK Golf and Leisure had previously developed the course at Stapleford Abbotts.

Stapleford Abbots has changed hands several times since it was established in the 1980s. It was purchased by Clubhaus (now the Club Company) in 1997, who subsequently sold the club to American Golf in late 2000 (completing the deal in April 2001). American Golf sold its freehold and leasehold interests in 22 golf clubs, including Stapleford Abbotts, to Crown Golf in 2005. 

According to the Theydon Bois and Abridge Action Group  around the time that planning permission was applied for to develop Blakes, another application was made by the same parties in April 2002 to develop land at Blunts Farm, Coopersale Lane, Theydon Bois. The application was made to Epping Forest District Council by Blunts Farm Estates Ltd to construct an 18 hole golf course, and a further application was maded in 2006 for associated buildings. The TBAAG state that the owners of Blunt Farm Estates Ltd are Philip Newman and Henry Smith, the same people behind Blakes and Stapleford Abbotts.

How much progress towards the construction of a course has been made since 2002 is uncertain but development appears to have halted now. It seems that the volume of material transported by lorries to the site and dumped here as landfill for the purposes of ‘landscaping’ and ‘contouring’ and the length of time (4 years) such landfill has taken place has angered local residents, attracted the attention of the Environment Agency, and resulted in an enforcement notice served on the site owner. Channel 5 covered the story on 25 September 2007, and the future of the site remains uncertain.

At Blakes, a promotion has been running for a while now (autumn/winter 2007) whereby the green fee is reduced to £15.00 Mon-Thur, £25 on Fridays, and £25 after 11am on weekends. The full green fee is £50 weekdays and £80 at weekends.

I haven’t come across many deals that allow you to play a course of this quality for under £20 in the London area, for the moment I can only think of West Middlesex. It’s exceptional value, and I urge you to take advantage of it whilst you can. The reason for the reduction is not immediately apparent to me. Perhaps it is because the course has not yet had time to mature, or because there are works going on around the clubhouse, or to attract people to the course in order to promote membership of the club, or simply because the club needs the cashflow.

Neighbouring golf courses are at North Weald (undergoing works in late 2007/early 2008, but open), Toot Hill, The Epping, North Weald driving range, and the excellent North Weald Par 3 course.

The course is laid out over rolling open farmland that is exposed to the elements. From the course there are good views of the surrounding countryside, which some neighbouring houses also benefit from. Blake Hall is visible from some areas of the course, and presumably the place from which the golf club takes its name. The Hall is the home of the Capel-Cure family and played a part in World War II as a temporary HQ for the RAF. It’s now a popular venue for weddings. 

The club describes its course as an ‘inland links’. This label might stem from the fact there are barely any trees on the course, the fairways are shaped and winding, there are a number of blind shots, the greens are fast and hard, and the rough has been allowed to grow long, coarse and sparse.

I understand that the course was built on predominantly clay soil, but in common with other courses owned by the same people a significant amount of earth has been deposited in this site over a period of four years. There is evidence of plenty of earthworks around the greens, but the most apparent evidence of construction to me is the water works. On the lower areas of the course, the architects have made use of the drainage to make a series of water hazards. The 8th for instance is an island green, which is reached from a raised tee some 125 yards away. The 17th is played over a pond, and the 18th has a pond to the left to frustrate pulled second shots.

The area surrounding the clubhouse is currently (autumn/winter 2007) undergoing some improvement works. I’m not certain precisely what, but imagine it is for an outside seating area, landscaping and a putting green. The area affected is at the rear of the clubhouse, which looks down towards the 18th green.

The owners have made every attempt to demonstrate the quality of their club and course. From the moment you take the turning from Epping Road, the long purpose built driveway which separates the course into two areas, gives you tantalising glimpes of the course around you.  The clubhouse is an attractive modern building with a restaurant, a shop and changing rooms, a bar, and a balcony overlooking the 18th green. The shop is just big enough to stock the essentials for your round. Complimentary tee and coffee is a nice touch, and the staff were welcoming and polite on my recent visit.

There is a practice ground close to the 9th green, which has a driving range covered with what might be a temporary structure to keep out the rain, and next to this is a practice green. I believe that some green fees include a complimentary bucket of balls on the practice ground, which is an excellent idea.

The fleet of buggies at Blakes is of a recent design incorporating a sat nav system that will display your position on the course and tell you the distance to the green. I can’t tell you how effective this is, as I didn’t test drive one.

It’s a course that long drivers will appreciate. There is often a carry over a hill or a bunker from the tee, but not much to give the longer hitters pause for thought. The par 5s are all sufficiently long but reachable with a long drive and a fairway wood. As the course is wide open, there’s no worries about driving your way into trouble, and although the rough is long, it’s quite thin on the ground, which leaves it easy to find your wayward ball and relatively easy to get it back into play.

An excellent feature of Blakes is its attention to yardage marking. Sounds dull, and it is, but it makes for a more enjoyable game if you don’t know the course. There are even different flag colours to indicate the day’s pin position - front, middle or back. There are also plenty of coloured markers set in the fairway to guide you, if you haven’t invested in the hire of a sat nav buggy.

There are perhaps one or two places where the course can feel a little cramped, where fairways run close to one another, but that’s a rare feeling. Generally the hills and rough are sufficient to separate the holes from the sight of one another. There is a wild and natural look to the cut of the rough, and the colour of the grass adds to the attractive links style of the course.

The fairways on my visit were OK, but not as good as I expected to find on a course that seems so expensively constructed and pitched at the high end of the market. On the particular day that I visited in November 2007, they were left to grow a little too long. but are shaped attractively as they wind upwards over hills, and slope gently into shallow valleys. The familiar black and white marker posts punctuate them to give you a line when you are blind to the target from the tee. And thankfully, there is only occasional use of the white out-of-bounds posts, which I find can otherwise ruin my enjoyment of some holes.

The greens are large and fast, and unusually hard. Which allows you to play pitch and run shots to them, or a crisply struck approach will stop. You will have more than the usual difficulty with any approach that comes in without sufficient spin though. The greens can look a little plain as they didn’t seem to me to have many dramatic contours or pronounced slopes. Oddly, they are for the most part flat, and no doubt built on sand. There are borrows, but they are subtle. They are, however, of an exceptionally high quality and the ball always seems to run true.

Bunkers are plentiful throughout the course, reducing your landing area from the tee, making you think twice about a 220 yard carry, and dominating your view of the approaches to the greens. Many of the bunkers are constructed using wooden sleepers, which builds up the lip, making them steeper around the green, and producing some very strange bounces if you’re unlucky to hit one. It seems this work was done by John Greasley golf course contractors, and it does lend some character to the course.

The teeing areas are well maintained, and like the greens, built on sand so the owners think that along with the greens they ought to be playable all year round. They are generously proportioned, allowing the set up of the course to change to suit competition play, for example, the course has been host to the Essex PGA Open Championship in 2006.

I’m uncertain how to rate its difficulty. From the front tees with no wind, I imagine it would be fairly tame. I played from the back tees, but with no wind, which could easily knock a club or two from your usual game.

I don’t know what the future holds for Blakes. Their website and full green fee of £60-£80 is for a ‘5 star’ facility that it might one day become. For now, the clubhouse is close to that, and no doubt will be improved by the ongoing works, I can’t comment on the restaurant as I didn’t try it, but in its present condition the course is not at that level. It has a slightly untidy look in places and is not as challenging as it at first appears.

£15 represents outstanding value, but I’m not sure it goes with the image of a 5 star club, and the course may take a battering as a result. I think it could currently bear a price of £25-£30. I hope the course is given a chance to mature and is toughened up.

Overall, although I have some reservations, I do recommend it highly and look forward to playing it again.

You can see more photographs from the course here.