Hoylake AT WAR


80 YEARS AGO BRITAIN DECLARED WAR ON GERMANY. FOLLOWING THE NAZI INVASION OF POLAND ON SEPTEMBER 1 1939, BRITISH AND FRENCH ULTIMATUMS DEMANDING WITHDRAWAL WERE ISSUED BUT WENT UNANSWERED BY ADOLF HITLER. TWO DAYS LATER, PRIME MINISTER NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN MADE HIS HISTORIC RADIO BROADCAST TO THE BRITISH PEOPLE.


SUDDENLY THERE WERE urgent matters to attend to:


increasing food production,


fending off a seaborne invasion by an army that had perfected the strategy of Blitzkrieg, and intercepting an air force that had already demonstrated its terrific firepower. Golf was required to do its bit. Suitable


courses gave up land to agriculture, while key seaside locations had to be prepared as defensive positions. Hoylake was one of the latter. In 1947, as the Club prepared to


host The Open, Secretary Guy Farrar reflected on Royal Liverpool’s war years,


beginning in mid-1939 when, as he put it, “freedom’s lamps were burning but dimly” and a shadow had fallen over that year’s Amateur Championship at Hoylake.


When the crowds dispersed, a friend of mine, a well known competitor, said to me, “When will the next Amateur be played, and how many of us here today will take part in it? The wonderful condition of these greens and fairways, and the care and labour of maintaining them, may seem of little moment in the near future.”


Above: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain


Farrar’s friend was right, and very soon people’s thoughts turned to more serious activities than golf. The phony war was over. The real one had begun. The first


signs of war on the Royal


Liverpool links were the arrival of a strange looking instrument, a predictor, said to be able to foretell the line of approach of hostile aircraft; certain elderly gentlemen beginning the task of digging trenches on various parts of the links, their leisurely and inexpert methods causing great amusement to the Royal Liverpool greenkeeper; a local contractor building a series of comic opera forts among the sand-hills;


the dazzling


beam of a searchlight, operated from a site near the Royal (17th) green, sweeping the night sky; the first German plane overhead; and the feeling that the long drawn suspense was over at last.


The enemy was soon identified, but turned out to be an unexpected one. An invasion followed, not by German storm troopers but by sheep, a destructive army of occupation remaining in undisturbed possession of the links until the Spring of 1945. During


the months following Above: Guy Farrar


Left: A World War Two Anti-Aircraft Predictor


the fall of France, a chain of minefields laid on the landward side of the sand-hills was surrounded by over three miles of barbed wire after sundry sheep and dogs had come to a sudden end, and, on one occasion, two small children had been rescued just as they were about to wander amongst the mines. This wire isolated the Dee, Alps and Hilbre holes, so temporary ones had to be brought into play, but the proper greens were mown at intervals, thus preventing their complete destruction by prolonged neglect.


ROYAL LIVERPOOL GOLF CLUB 2019–2020 MAGAZINE 13


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