The closure of an 118-year-old golf course to make way for a housing development has left members with an “overwhelming feeling of great sadness”.<\/p>\n
North Oxford Golf Club will close on Friday, after the 70-acre site was earmarked for the development of more than 1,000 homes.<\/p>\n
Jill Northover, who has played at the club for 20 years, said members had been “dreading today”.<\/p>\n
The land’s owners Oxford University, Merton College and Exeter College previously came to an agreement with the golf club and offered them \u00a34.3m to leave the site.<\/p>\n
A group of golfers, known as the Greenway group, came together to try to stop the plans but were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
An alternative golf course site at Frieze Farm has been proposed as part of Cherwell District Council’s local plan.<\/p>\n
“People are having to go to various other clubs, and some of which are now full because there are so many of us needing to move,” Ms Northover explained.<\/p>\n
“The overwhelming feeling is one of great sadness that this green space will no longer be there because once it’s gone, you can’t get it back.<\/p>\n
“It’s the physical exercise, the mental wellbeing you get from the sport, making friends, having a chat afterwards, playing competitions if you want to.”<\/p>\n
David Young, who has been a member of the golf club for about 40 years, said the club had been “open to everybody, it’s not been exclusive, it’s always been very inclusive”.<\/p>\n
“Lots of local people have valued what it offered, and that’s much more important than whatever has been won or not won,” he added.<\/p>\n
Ms Northover said her favourite memory had been a hole-in-one on the second, “although I didn’t see it go in the hole because you can’t see it from the tee”.<\/p>\n
She said she had made “friends for life” at the club, before adding that she was “off to play the course one last time”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The closure of an 118-year-old golf course to make way for a housing development has left members with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-253898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}