Brookdale Golf Club

Brookdale lies in Failsworth, on the eastern edge of Oldham in Greater Manchester, part of the dense band of former mill towns that grew up along the Irk and Medlock valleys during the Industrial Revolution. The area's golf clubs, several of which date from the late Victorian and Edwardian period when the sport spread rapidly among the mill-owning and professional classes of Lancashire's textile towns, sit on land that was once farmland ringing the expanding industrial settlements. Failsworth itself grew around cotton spinning and hat making, its terraced streets and chapels still visible alongside the newer housing that has filled in much of the gap between Oldham and Manchester city centre. The club's position on this eastern fringe of Greater Manchester puts it within easy reach of the M60 orbital motorway, connecting golfers from across the conurbation. The wider area, once dominated by mill chimneys, has been substantially reshaped since the decline of the textile industry, with former industrial land increasingly given over to housing, retail parks and pockets of green space such as this.