West Yorkshire, England
Northcliffe Golf Club is an 18-hole, par 71 parkland course measuring 6,113 yards from the white tees, situated on High Bank Lane in Shipley, West Yorkshire, overlooking the Aire Valley. The club was founded in 1921 by local enthusiasts who established a municipal golf course on the Northcliffe Estate, land given in trust to the people of Shipley by benefactor Sir Henry Norman Rae MP. Golf was initially played over nine holes on the Moorhead course. In 1922, James Braid and Harry Vardon were commissioned to design and construct an additional nine holes. Further land was acquired in 1928, and Braid was engaged again to redesign the entire layout, which was fully opened in September 1930. The course has changed little from that Braid configuration. Braid is credited with refining the dogleg hole as a design art form, and Northcliffe features several strategically complex shorter par fours that reward careful positioning rather than raw power.
The course is set within around 100 acres of parkland and makes distinctive use of a natural ravine that runs through the property. The opening hole is a par four of around 250 yards that requires a carry of approximately 120 yards over the ravine to a dogleg left fairway beyond a band of trees, with a steel footbridge spanning the ravine for pedestrian access, opened in 1933. The course then climbs and meanders across the hillside, with exposed stretches on the index one 13th and the index three 16th testing golfers in the prevailing wind.
The signature hole is the par three 18th, which plays downhill from an elevated tee into the same ravine that frames the opening hole. The tee shot descends to a green guarded by bunkers, a banking, and a stream running along the right side, with the compact and exposed target making it a genuine card-wrecker as a closing hole. It is widely regarded as one of the finest finishing holes in Yorkshire.
