Kingsthorpe Golf Club

Kingsthorpe takes its name from the Northampton suburb in which it sits, on the northern side of a town that grew rapidly through the shoe and leather trades of the nineteenth century before spreading out into the surrounding Northamptonshire countryside. The county sits roughly midway between London and Birmingham, its landscape a mix of ironstone villages, river valleys and gently rising farmland that has supplied land for golf clubs on the edges of most of its larger towns. The course plays over eighteen holes to a par of 69, a tighter target than the par-70 or par-72 layouts more common elsewhere, suggesting a round built around accuracy and shorter holes rather than sheer length. Northampton's own expansion means the club now sits within easy reach of the town centre and the ring road network, while the older streets of Kingsthorpe itself, with a parish history going back to Domesday, lie just to the south. It is a course shaped as much by the town's growth around it as by the Northamptonshire landscape further out.