Golf Club

By Geoff Cunliffe

When Thomas Riley built Fairhaven Lake in the 1890s, he also built a golf course alongside it. That was the Fairhaven Golf Club, and it was indeed the start of the club which still exists today behind the Hall Park Estate and the Fylde Rugby Club.

The club house was what is now the lake café. The golf course started by running up the inland side of the lake; there were no tennis courts or bowling greens, nor was there the hedge which now separates the present sporting facilities from the lake itself. It ran as far as St.Paul’s Avenue, dog-legged across the top end of the lake, continued up the seaward side of the lake and stretched as far as The Bungalow at Cartmell Road before returning to the present café.

But this Utopian lifestyle was short-lived because on Thursday 9th October 1896, the tide broke through the outer stanner bank at the St.Paul’s Avenue end, flooding all the low lying land adjoining the lake including the Club House and much of the golf links. As the ‘Blackpool Times’ reported:

“One of the strangest effects of the storm and tempest of last week was the inundation of a large tract of land at the new growing watering-place of Fairhaven. The fury of the big waves, dashing with much persistence on the new sea wall running along a portion of the front, was such that the wall gave way for some distance along, and in a moment there was a vast rushing of waters across the long strip of low-lying land comprising the golf links of the Fairhaven Golf Club. The onrush of the waters, with such unexpected suddenness and with such impetuous force, took by surprise some members who were in the club house, and the stewardess, Mrs. Davenport. They were quickly surrounded by the rushing waters, and as the depth of the water was rapidly increasing they had no alternative but to wade ashore. Furniture was fetched from the house in boats, and deposited upon the shore of the now huge newly-formed lake, for the whole area of the links right away to The Bungalow was submerged, and the strong sou' wester lashed the water into great waves. It was impossible to empty lockers in the Clubhouse and the red coats and golf clubs of members were rendered useless by their contact with the salt water. Quickly the water rose as the tide rushed in, until the waves actually reached the eaves of the Club-house, washing to and fro as though they would tear the building from its foundations.”

The golf club decided not to risk a repeat of the flooding, and on 5th. May 1900, the club withdrew from the lake area to a new Club House in St. Paul’s Avenue.

That replacement Club House also still exists; it was converted into a pair of houses numbered 1 & 3 St.Paul’s Avenue when the Golf Club moved to its present course in 1924.