Little Aston Golf Club

Little Aston was designed in 1908 by Harry Vardon, reputedly for ten guineas, on 136 acres of parkland around Little Aston Hall, north of Birmingham. Vardon built a course with long carries that the members found too hard, so Harry Colt was called in to make it friendlier. The design has changed little since.

It is a par 72, measuring 6,813 yards from the blue tees, 6,704 from the whites, 6,420 from the yellows and 5,762 from the reds.

What it asks of you

Bunkering. Reviewers who know the English parkland courses call Little Aston’s the best they have played, and it is the club’s crowning feature rather than a detail.

What that means in practice is that the fairway is wide but the useful part of it is narrow. A bunker placed at the outside of a driving zone does not have to catch many balls to change how the hole is played; it only has to make the good line the uncomfortable one.

The Colt revision is the reason the course is playable at all for a member. Vardon’s carries suited Vardon; Colt shortened the demand without softening the design, which is a harder job than building a course from scratch.

What players say about it

This is a private club with visitor access, and the golf press covers it well. The points below summarise what recurs. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• It was rated the number one parkland course in England in the 2019 Golf World rankings, and reviewers still treat it that way.
• The bunkering is singled out in almost every account as the best feature of the course.
• Conditioning is described as excellent, from the greens to the fairway turf to the tees.
• The welcome is repeatedly mentioned, which for a club of this standing is worth recording.
• The Vardon and Colt lineage, largely intact since 1908, interests anyone who cares about design.

What comes up against

• Access is restricted: private club, visitor times arranged in advance.
• The bunkering that makes the course also punishes a high handicap heavily.
• At 6,813 yards it is not long by modern championship standards.
• It is parkland in a region full of parkland, and visitors seeking variety look elsewhere.

Getting there and when to go

The club is at Streetly, north of Birmingham, twenty minutes from the city centre and half an hour from Birmingham airport.

The season is year-round, but May, June and September give the firmest ground. Midlands winters leave parkland soft. Visitor times must be arranged in advance.

Green fees

Visitor conditions are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, the club’s published history and encyclopaedic entries for the 1908 design, Vardon’s fee and Colt’s revision, and public course records and the golf press for par, the four sets of tees and the rankings. The opinion section summarises public reviews read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations.

We have not played this course, and this page is no substitute for a round. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.