Waterton Park Golf Club

Waterton Park Golf Club lies in Walton, a village on the south-eastern side of Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, inside the walled park of Walton Hall, the Georgian house that is now the Waterton Park Hotel. The listings we consulted give its address as The Balk, Walton, Wakefield, WF2 6QL, and place it about four miles south-east of Wakefield city centre. It is an eighteen-hole parkland course, par 72 for men and par 73 for women, designed by the English architect Simon Gidman and opened in 1995. On the club’s current scorecard it measures 6,656 yards from the black tees, 6,371 from the whites, 6,086 from the yellows and 5,598 from the blues. The club also runs a driving range open until 9pm, a short academy course and a short game area.

What makes the place unusual is the ground it occupies. The park was enclosed in the 1820s by the naturalist Charles Waterton, who turned it into what Historic England, when it added the park to its Register of Parks and Gardens in March 2024, described as the first dedicated nature reserve for the protection of native wild species in the world. The course is laid out around the lake that surrounds the hall, within Waterton’s boundary wall, and several of its holes take their names from the estate’s history: Canal Turn, The Grotto, The Herony, The Hide, Stubbs Wood, The Squires Grave, Herons Hill and Walton Hall. The golf club is a privately owned company, separate from the hotel, as both the hotel and the club point out.

The course is in play. In October 2026 the club’s website showed the course status as open and was posting weekly competition results, the latest dated 12 October 2026, and a regional business announced a corporate golf day at the club for July 2026. We found no notice of closure, sale or major renovation.

A naturalist’s park, a maternity home and a golf course

The history of the estate is told in the Wikipedia articles on Walton Hall and Charles Waterton, and in more detail in a short history and walks leaflet, History and circular walks from Waterton Park, Walton Hall, written by David Dunford in 2024 and published by the hotel. According to these sources, the Waterton family acquired Walton through the marriage of Constance Asshenhull to Richard Waterton in 1435, and the medieval hall stood on an island in a moat. The only part of the old house still standing is the watergate, which once guarded the sole entrance across a drawbridge and which Wikipedia says is thought to date from the fourteenth century. In the second half of the eighteenth century the moat was enlarged into a lake, which Wikipedia puts at 26 acres, and around 1767 Thomas Waterton built the present house on the island. The house and its cast-iron footbridge are listed at Grade II*.

Charles Waterton, Thomas’s son, was born in the new house in 1782. He spent years in British Guiana, where he helped oversee his uncle’s plantations and explored the interior, and his book Wanderings in South America, published in 1825, is credited by Wikipedia with inspiring Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. He inherited the estate in 1805 and, from 1821, began to enclose the park. His stone wall, a little over three miles long, was built in stages as money allowed and was finished in 1826. Inside it he banned shooting, kept gamekeepers and their dogs out of sensitive areas during the nesting season, suspended boating on the lake, planted mixed woodland for birds and built stone watch towers for observing wildlife. Wikipedia credits him with inventing the bird nesting box. Dunford’s leaflet says one surviving tower once stood in a heronry of up to forty nests; that is the heronry remembered, in the club’s spelling, in the name of the 12th hole.

Waterton also spent years in court against Edward Simpson, the owner of a nearby soap works whose pollution damaged trees and the lake, and eventually had the works moved. He died in 1865, at the age of 82, after a fall on the estate, and was buried at a spot he had chosen near the place of the accident, deep in the woods at the head of the lake. His grave is still there, reached by a footpath through Stubbs Wood. The club does not explain the name of its 16th hole, The Squires Grave, but Dunford notes that Waterton was known locally as the Squire. After his death his son Edmund went bankrupt and, according to Dunford, had to sell the estate to Edward Simpson junior, the son of his father’s old adversary.

The twentieth century brought very different uses. Dunford writes that Walton Hall was requisitioned as a maternity home during the Second World War and remained one until 1966; Wikipedia describes maternity use in the 1940s and again in the early 1950s and early 1960s. Renovation as a country club began in the 1970s, and the hotel has been privately owned since 1989. The golf club, Dunford says, opened as a separate concern in 1995, a date also given by Wakefield Council, which describes a course set around the lake within the enclosed park, and by the course listings we consulted. The course was designed by Simon Gidman; the club’s own pages do not name him, but the hotel, GolfNow, Hole19 and Golf Today all do.

The course now shares the park with protected heritage. In March 2024 Historic England registered Waterton Park at Grade II (Wikidata gives 7 March 2024 as the date of designation, under list entry 1487471), and Wakefield Council announced at the same time that the boundary wall had also been given Grade II status. Historic England’s survey photographs from January 2024 show the golf course inside the registered landscape, including an artificial badger hide beside one of the fairways. A volunteer group, the Friends of Waterton’s Wall, campaigns for the repair of sections of the wall that are crumbling. Wikipedia notes that Walton Hall has been proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

What the course asks of you

The figures below come from the club’s summer 2025 scorecard, published on its website. The course is par 72 for men, with two par 3s, five par 4s and two par 5s on each nine, and par 73 for women, because the 18th is a par 5 from the forward tee. From the black tees the outward nine measures 3,447 yards and the inward nine 3,209 yards, for a total of 6,656. The white tees measure 6,371 yards, the yellow 6,086 and the blue 5,598. The card prints five pairs of course rating and slope: 73.1 and 137, 71.8 and 133, 70.4 and 130 and 68.1 and 123, which appear to run from the black tees to the blue, and 73.8 and 130 for women at par 73. The club’s course guide describes greens and approaches built to USPGA specification, more than fifty bunkers and thousands of trees, with full greens in play all year round.

The ground is not flat, and the club’s hole guide repeatedly mentions slopes, raised greens and uphill approaches. The 3rd, Badger Hill, a par 4 of 404 yards from the blacks and stroke index 3, has a fairway that falls steeply from left to right, and the club advises taking at least one more club than usual for the approach to its raised green. The 4th, 40 Acre Long, is the longest hole on the course at 605 yards from the blacks, a par 5 that the club says only long hitters can reach in two, with fairway bunkers on both sides of the landing area and a very deep green on which the flag position changes the approach.

The 5th, The Gate Posts, is stroke index 1: a par 4 of 453 yards from the blacks and 421 from the whites, played slightly uphill between trees, to a green that slopes from back to front, so that the club advises leaving the ball below the hole. The 7th, The Lakeside, is the shortest hole on the card at 173 yards from the blacks, a par 3 played from the side of the lake where the wind needs checking, to a green with three bunkers that slopes from right to left. The 8th, The Grotto, a par 5 of 543 yards, opens with a downhill drive on which players wait for a bell before teeing off, then climbs, with a fairway ditch, a pair of fairway bunkers and out of bounds on the left.

The back nine opens with a par 5, the 10th, Millennium Wood, 502 yards from the blacks, with a generous fairway and an uphill approach that gives long hitters a chance in two. Then come two short par 4s that offer different kinds of temptation. The 12th, The Herony (spelt The Heronry on the scorecard), is 258 yards from every tee on the card and stroke index 18: the club calls it the easiest hole on the course, within reach of a driver, with bunkers to the right of a green that slopes from left to right. The 13th, Plover Swamp, a par 4 of 304 yards from the blacks, is a decision hole: the bold line carries a pond about 240 yards from the tee, with out of bounds to the right, and the safe one lays up short of the water and pitches over it.

The 14th, The Hide, is stroke index 2, a par 4 of 441 yards from the blacks up a gently rising fairway, with a bunker on the left and out of bounds on the right; the club’s advice is to drive over the crest so as to see the green. The 16th, The Squires Grave, the last par 5 at 517 yards from the blacks, has a fairway that falls away to the right towards a group of large trees and a raised green. The scorecard gives the 16th stroke index 6; the club’s online course guide shows it as 4, the same as the 18th, and we follow the card.

The finish is the part of the course the club sells hardest. The 17th, Herons Hill, a par 3 of 187 yards from the blacks, 170 from the whites and 157 from the yellows, is played from a raised tee with views over the lake and the hotel, with water to the left of the green and bunkers on the right. The club calls it the standout hole on the course and warns that the wind and the height of the tee make club selection the key. The 18th, Walton Hall, is a long par 4 of 454 yards from the blacks, and a par 5 for women, with a fairway bunker on the right and the most undulating green on the course; the club describes it as one of the best and toughest finishing holes in Yorkshire, and advises aiming the second shot left of the flag because the ground kicks from left to right.

Two practical points stand out from the hole guide. Several holes have out of bounds close to the line, notably the 8th, 13th and 14th, and the course is wooded enough that the club repeatedly advises a conservative tee shot, starting with the 1st, Canal Turn, a par 4 of 343 yards bending slightly to the left with trees on that side. And the routing covers a large park: the course is set within an estate the club puts at 240 acres and the hotel and several listings at 200 acres, and the walks between some greens and the next tees are long.

What golfers say

The points below summarise the golfer reviews we could read in October 2026: the reviews collected on Wanderlog, which aggregates ratings from Google and Tripadvisor and displays a sample of reviews dated from 2022 to 2025, the reviews shown on Hole19, and the extracts of GolfPass reviews that appear in search results. Hole19 gives the course an average of 4.7 out of 5 from more than ninety ratings, and Wanderlog shows a Google average of 4.6 from more than 250 ratings. We could not open the GolfPass pages themselves, and the reviews section on GolfNow was empty. These are other people’s opinions, not ours. Nobody from Panxis has played the course, and we name no reviewer.

What comes up in its favour

• The setting. The lake, the hall and the wooded nature reserve come up again and again, with views over the estate from many holes.
• Condition. Reviewers describe a well-kept course, with greens often singled out as true and among the best they had played in a season.
• The layout. Many find it a demanding but fair test, with a good variety of holes and good use of the tree-lined terrain, suitable for a range of abilities.
• Practice facilities. The covered driving range and the putting and chipping areas are popular for warming up before a round.
• Welcome and food. Staff are described as friendly, and the halfway house and the clubhouse bar are recommended.

What comes up against

• Long walks between some greens and the next tees, which makes for a long day on foot.
• Deep sand in some bunkers, where balls can plug.
• Wet patches on parts of the back nine in some reviews, and winter fairway mats that shorten the course in the colder months.
• Slow pace of play on some visits, and a few remarks on dated facilities behind the scenes.
• Value is debated: some reviewers think the round fair for the quality, others found it worthwhile only with a discount offer.

Getting there and when to go

The course is reached by the access road to the Waterton Park Hotel in Walton, about four miles south-east of Wakefield city centre according to Golf Today. Wakefield has two railway stations, Westgate and Kirkgate, and the walks leaflet published by the hotel notes that the towpath of the disused Barnsley Canal, which runs along the western edge of the park, forms part of the Trans Pennine Trail. Golf Today gives Leeds Bradford as the nearest airport, about 25 miles away. Anglers Country Park, a lake and bird hide on the site of a former opencast coal mine, lies just beyond the wall.

The club welcomes visitors. Tee times can be booked online through its visitor tee booking page, up to seven days ahead, or by telephone through the pro shop; the club shows separate midweek and weekend visitor categories and afternoon tee times from 1pm. In winter, Saturdays are reserved for members’ shotgun starts. Societies and company golf days are taken by enquiry, with weekday packages from 10.30am and weekend packages in the afternoon, and the club points out that overnight accommodation is arranged with the hotel, which it does not run. Buggies can be hired, according to both the club’s visitor information and the hotel’s golf page, and trolleys are available from the pro shop.

The club’s dress code asks for reasonable golf attire and golf shoes on the course, allows tailored shorts with socks, and bans denim, tracksuits and football or rugby shirts; jeans are allowed in the clubhouse, and golf shoes only on its ground floor. The range has ten covered bays and three outdoor bays and is open from 7am to 9pm; at the bottom of it is an academy course of several par 3 holes, and there is a fescue chipping green with practice bunkers. The halfway house is open seven days a week. The professionals, led by the head PGA professionals Phil Akers and Scott McGovern, offer lessons, Trackman analysis and custom fitting through the Yorkshire Golf Academy.

Public footpaths cross the park, including the walk to Waterton’s grave, his restored watch tower and the boundary wall, but the hotel’s leaflet stresses that there is no public access to the course itself and that the tracks across it are for golf carts only. Walkers on the paths are a reason to look before you play on the holes near them.

The club says full greens are in play all year round. Spring and early summer are the obvious time for birdlife on the lake and in the woods that Waterton protected, and long summer evenings suit the range. In winter, expect mats on the fairways, some wet ground and a Saturday programme reserved for members.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location; the club’s website, read in October 2026, for the course status, the hole-by-hole guide with the professionals’ advice, the summer 2025 scorecard with its ratings and slopes, the visitor information and dress code (without the prices), the practice facilities, the halfway house, the professionals and the latest competition results; the visitor tee booking system the club links to; the golf page of the Waterton Park Hotel for the description of the course, the designer, the buggies and the separate ownership of the club; David Dunford’s leaflet History and circular walks from Waterton Park, Walton Hall (2024), published by the hotel, for the history of the estate, the hall, the opening of the club and the rules for walkers; the English Wikipedia articles on Walton Hall and on Charles Waterton; Wakefield Council’s announcement of March 2024 and Historic England’s letter of registration, as published by the Yorkshire Gardens Trust, for the registration of the park; Historic England’s aerial survey photographs; Wikidata, where the identifier Q126208057 refers to Waterton Park, the designed landscape, rather than to the golf club; GolfNow, Golf Today and Hole19 for the address, the designer and the year of opening; Wanderlog, Hole19 and GolfPass for the golfer reviews.

Where sources disagree, we say so. The club’s current scorecard gives 6,656 yards from the black tees, which its course guide adds up to, while the text of the same course guide gives 6,634 yards from the competition tees; the hotel gives 6,689 yards, GolfNow lists 6,689 yards from blue tees and 6,555 from whites with different ratings, and its description and Hole19’s give 6,843 yards. These look like figures from earlier versions of the card, and we use the current one. The club puts the estate at 240 acres, the hotel and several listings at 200 acres. The online guide gives the 16th stroke index 4, the card 6. On individual hole pages, the 5th is 344 yards from the blue tee against 370 on the card, the 4th is described as 565 yards from the competition tees against 560 from the whites on the card, and the 18th is described as 445 yards against 454 from the blacks; we report the card. The guide names the 12th The Herony and the scorecard The Heronry. The club describes greens to USPGA specification, the hotel to USGA specification. Dunford dates the maternity home from the Second World War to 1966, Wikipedia to the 1940s, early 1950s and early 1960s. The scorecard does not label which tee each rating belongs to; we give them in the order printed. The year 1995 for the opening comes from Wakefield Council, Dunford and the course listings; the club’s own pages give no date and do not name the architect.

Some sources could not be used. The website address we started from, watertonpark.org.uk, refused the connection, and the club’s current address is watertonparkgc.co.uk. The Historic England list entry and news release returned an access error, the Wakefield Council release could not be reached at its address, the Today’s Golfer page was behind a paywall and the GolfPass review pages refused access, so we relied on the other sources listed above. We found no hole-by-hole yardages for the women’s tees beyond the blue column of the card.

The opinion section summarises golfer reviews read in October 2026. We report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations from reviewers. Nobody from Panxis has played or visited 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. This page contains no commercial link and earns us no commission. If you know the club and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.

Other courses nearby

Closest to this one in our British directory:

• Huddersfield Golf Club — 14 mi
• Alwoodley Golf Club — 16 mi
• Sand Moor Golf Club — 16 mi
• Lindrick Golf Club — 24 mi