North Berwick Golf Club

North Berwick is a coastal town in East Lothian, on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, with Bass Rock visible offshore and North Berwick Law rising behind the harbour. Golf here dates to 1832, and North Berwick Golf Club spent its early decades building membership, from around 60 founders toward a target of 120 needed for financial viability; membership reached 143 by 1883, the year after a clubhouse opened in 1880. A separate body, the New Club, took over the lease of the links in 1894, and the original North Berwick Golf Club carried on with dwindling numbers until 1963, when its remaining 27 members agreed to amalgamate with the New Club under the name 'The North Berwick Golf Club', which continues to trace its founding to 1832. A Ladies' Golf Club had formed in 1888, playing a nine-hole course laid out some twenty years earlier near what is now the 16th fairway, based in a timber clubhouse at the Marine Hotel with its own lease and greenkeeping staff; the ladies moved onto the West Links in 1935 and have shared the clubhouse as associate members ever since. The clubhouse closed for a year's refurbishment in 2008. The course itself is known as the West Links.