Bedford & County Golf Club

The course opened in April 1912 with a thirty-six hole exhibition match, north-east of Clapham on the edge of Bedford. Eleven years later it was rebuilt: on 26 April 1923 it reopened to a design by J.H. Taylor and Fred G. Hawtree, and that redesign introduced bunkers to the property for the first time.

The Second World War then took it apart. Holes six to fifteen were requisitioned for food production, and the full eighteen were not back in play until June 1952. What is on the ground today is therefore Taylor and Hawtree’s plan recovered rather than continuously maintained, which makes the coherence of the course more of an achievement than it appears.

What it asks of you

Par 70 over 6,327 yards of gently rolling parkland above the valley of the Great Ouse. Taylor and Hawtree between them produced a course that is fair off the tee and demanding on the approach.

The greens are well defended and sited so that a miss on one side is far more expensive than a miss on the other, and they carry real slope. That combination, fast surfaces on severe contours, is what visitors remember and what makes the scoring harder than the yardage suggests. Eighty years of woodland growth has given the corridors more definition than they had in 1923.

The par fours through the middle of the round are the stretch most accounts single out, and there is general agreement that the course has no filler holes.

What players say about it

Visitors and societies play by arrangement and the review record is healthy. The notes below summarise recurring themes across specialist golf sites, traveller review pages and player discussion threads. They are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course. We report what comes back repeatedly rather than isolated remarks, and we do not name or quote individual reviewers.

What comes up in its favour

• Conditioning is well rated across the year, and the club’s upkeep in poor weather is specifically praised.
• The greens are the most discussed feature: fast, undulating and the reason the course plays harder than its length.
• Reviewers repeatedly say there are no dull holes, which is a higher compliment than it sounds for a parkland course of this size.
• The clubhouse, the bar and the food come up in a large share of accounts, and the welcome is described as friendly.

What comes up against

• Green surfaces are not uniformly praised. Some visitors report them bumpy and showing the effects of heavy traffic.
• The severity of the slopes frustrates players who found the speed and the contour too much in combination.
• At 6,327 yards it will not stretch a strong player from any tee.
• The setting is pleasant rather than spectacular, and visitors expecting drama do not find it.

Getting there and when to go

The club is at Clapham, on the northern edge of Bedford beside the A6, around twenty minutes from junction 13 of the M1 and an hour from Luton airport, with Bedford on the main line from London St Pancras.

The course plays all year, and the club’s reputation for keeping it playable in poor weather is part of why members stay. Late spring and early autumn are the best of it. Visitor and society booking is by arrangement.

Green fees

Rates and visitor tee times are handled by the club and vary by day and season. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, Wikipedia and published coverage for the club’s history, the 1923 redesign and the wartime requisition, and the club’s own site for access and booking. The opinion section summarises public reviews and player discussions read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we do not reproduce or attribute quotes.

We have not played this course, and nothing here is a substitute for that. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say in what it says. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.