In 1891, David Brown — winner of the 1886 Open Championship at Musselburgh, who later moved to the Malvern Club — was charged with an unusual commission: lay out a golf course inside a 2,500-year-old hillfort. The result was Painswick Golf Club, one of the oldest courses in Gloucestershire, its fairways threading between the banks and ditches of Kimsbury Camp on the summit of Painswick Beacon. Brown's original nine-hole layout was played in the opposite direction to the present course. The early clubhouse was the Royal William pub, which served golfers until 1915, and committee meetings were held at Kimsbury House, home of Sir John Percival. The course was extended to eighteen holes in 1907. At 5,000 yards with a par of 67, it is not long by modern standards, but length is beside the point here. The course sits at over 280 metres on the Cotswold escarpment, exposed to whatever the weather sends across the Severn Vale. On a clear day, the panorama takes in the Malvern Hills to the north, the Brecon Beacons to the west, and the Forest of Dean beyond the silver thread of the Severn. Golfers share the hilltop with Iron Age earthworks, wildflowers and the walkers of the Cotswold Way, which crosses the course near the beacon's summit obelisk. It is one of the few places in England where you can lose a ball in a ditch dug three millennia ago.
“At 5,000 yards with a par of 67, it is not long by modern standards, but length is beside the point here.”
