This month Crosland Heath has kicked off a packed calendar of internal, open and invitational events to mark the club’s centenary year.

Normally a centenary celebrates the first 100 years, but the club was actually born down the road in 1896, when the original members set up a nine-hole course at Cowlersley.

In the year of the outbreak of World War I, they had to vacate the land as houses were due to be built on it. They searched for a suitable site and in 1914 moved up the hill to “this lofty Pennine ridge where the breezes bend the heather and the skylarks hover in twittering song.”

The new club was located on the site of Barkerite Farm and consisted of a series of windswept fields, a number of stone farm buildings and a farmhouse. The owner was one farmer and butcher Thomas Green Swallow, born in 1860 who lived at the farm with his wife and four children - Lewis (who went on to become a member), Percy, Edgar and Lillian.

In the mid-1800s, there was a breakaway Methodist movement known as the Barkerites, named after Leeds-born preacher the Reverend Joseph Barker. He was a reformer who spent some time in the United States, where he was a keen supporter of the abolition of slavery.

On June 16, 1849, the Leeds Mercury reported a meeting of Chartists – working-class men lobbying for political reform – at a Crosland Moor farm owned by the Barkerites, hence the name of the farm.

In 1913 The Examiner’s golf correspondent Mr Bulger wrote: “It requires very little of the imaginative faculty to see that away at the top of the hills there above the Sands House Inn, the players who follow this little white ball will have a course full of interest from the first hole to the last.

“I was very favourably impressed with the great possibilities of the land. I have seen nothing more delightful in its way than the view from the top of the moor on the evening when I was up there.”

The Cowlersley members were keen to make a proper start, rather than taking a piecemeal approach, and set themselves the task of raising the large sum of £1,000 – equivalent to £98,000 today – which they soon achieved.

They employed the leading course designer of the day, Yorkshireman Dr Alistair MacKenzie, to lay out the course. Their worries about what to do with the old stone quarries were soon put to rest.

In his report to club officials, Dr MacKenzie wrote: “It will be noticed that I have placed as many greens as possible near the old quarry workings. There are few, if any, golf courses which are so fortunate as to possess ground of this character – Mid Surrey have recently spent some thousands of pounds in attempting to make feeble imitations of this kind of hazard.”

There were 160 original members, including several ladies, and Crosland Heath was one of the few clubs which allowed Sunday play, leaving the decision to each member’s conscience. The joining fee and annual subscription were two guineas each.

On the original layout, the 475-yard first and the 467-yard fifth holes were par sixes and par for the course was 81 – and some members wish it still was!

The early pioneers transformed the wild moorland into a golf course and the farmhouse into a clubhouse. They manned rotas to remove many hundreds of yards of dry stone walls.

During World War II, around 50 members served in the Forces and railway sleepers were put on the fairways to prevent German planes or gliders from landing. A siren was installed on the clubhouse roof linked to the early warning system at Fylingdales, and a blackout was in operation. The Home Guard manned shifts, watching the night sky from the upstairs Ladies’ Lounge, where they kept the country safe while supping a few pints.

On October 4, 1954, current members Roy and Val Goggs (who have together notched up 126 years of membership) got married in the new clubhouse extension.

Val recalls: “It was a very windy day, but when I arrived at the club from the church in my wedding dress and veil, I still wasn’t allowed in the front entrance, as this was for men only! I had to walk round the back with my dress and veil blowing everywhere and come in at the back, which was the ladies’ entrance!”

In the 1960s and 1970s the course was transformed with the planting of thousands of trees. But it was another series of events which put Crosland Heath on the map – the famous Fiesta Nites.

On September 11, 1971, the Heath lined up a famous triple billing led by chart topper Peter Noone and Herman’s Hermits, followed by Acker Bilk and the Paramount Jazz Band, and the Trinidad Steel Band.

The following year pop sensations Georgie Fame and Alan Price headlined an evening attended by 3,000 revellers.

Things have quietened down a bit since then, although the club’s unbeatable Rules of Golf quiz team made national golfing headlines between 1997 and 2002, becoming Yorkshire and Northern Champions and twice winning through to the grand final at St Andrew’s.

The club’s tough conditions have spawned a number of notable players who have gone on to achieve success on the world stage, including Malcolm Lee, Alec Bickerdike and, more recently, Chris Hanson and Rochelle Morris. Current Union junior captain Jonathan Fleetwood is a name to watch out for.

Sunday June 15 – Mixed open Am-Am, Thursday June 26 – Ladies Centenary Open Am-Am, Sunday July 27 – Gents’ Centenary Open Fourball, Thursday July 31 – Senior Open Fourball, Thursday August 7 – Ladies’ Open Am-Am, Tuesday August 12 – Junior Open, Wednesday September 10 – Ladies’ Open Tri-Am.

Contact the club on 01484 653216 for further details.

Click here to take you back to more Sports news.

Want to read, watch and hear more? You can download the FREE Examiner Apple App here, the FREE Examiner Android App here or you can view the paper as an e-edition on your Apple, Android or Kindle device by clicking here

To follow us on Twitter click here