“Unfortunately, there is still a notion among the ‘lunatic fringe’ of the conservation movement that golf courses don’t offer any more to wildlife than arable land”


David Walker, Naturalist


Ist tee at Druids Heath A


round 1970, Les Swain, an Aldridge farmer and keen golfer, decided to diversify on a grand scale. He converted his 160 acres


of supposedly third-rate arable land to an 18-hole golf course, despite being able to grow first-rate root crops such as parsnips, sugar beet and potatoes. The course was first played in 1971 when I took a photograph across the 5th with golfers in action. It was officially opened in 1974.


Druids Heath takes its name, not from those venerable Celtic priests in long white robes, but from Drewed Heath, the Anglo-Saxon precursor of Domesday Aldridge Heath or Common. A non-golfer and migrant to the west midlands from the south in 1969, I remember when the land was converted, and the original public footpath that ran through it, before it was rerouted. I have


Many of the trees on the course have been grown in the tree nursery from nuts


watched the evolution of the course as a valuable wildlife resource up to the present day.


Equally important, its merits as a golf course are dependent on the geological history of the area, for its free drainage is a consequence of the sand and gravel subsoil laid down by the melt waters of retreating glaciers around 10,000 years ago. In their wake were carried a variety of rocks - granites and agates from Scotland and 400 million-year-old lavas from the Borrowdale area of the Lake District, when volcanoes were part of the landscape. In 1995, one of these large glacial erratics was unearthed when new bunkers were being constructed, and was set up as a public footpath marker. The course is surrounded on all sides by arable land, with its hedgerows and copses, horse pasture, parkland, and Aldridge Cricket Club is also a


neighbour. It is only a few miles from the large tract of ancient heathland known as Sutton Park, an SSSI. Unfortunately, there is still a notion among the ‘lunatic fringe’ of the conservation movement that golf courses don’t offer any more to wildlife than arable land. In the case of Aldridge, the course and its arable neighbour are equally important to wildlife. Over the forty years of the course’s existence it has become evident how species, particularly birds, have benefited greatly from the change of land use and extended their range.


The course was purchased by the members in 1987 and, a year later, Jim Lake became Head Greenkeeper. It was he and his team who began its gradual and brilliant transformation into what must be a players’ - and non-players’ - paradise within an integral part of the


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