Top Meadow Golf Club

Top Meadow Golf Club lies in North Ockendon, a small and still largely rural parish on the eastern edge of Greater London where Essex's green belt meets the built-up fringes of Havering and Thurrock. The eighteen-hole course was laid out in 1985, relatively recent by the standards of English golf, at a time when this corner of Essex was still absorbing pressure for development from London's eastward growth. North Ockendon remains one of the smallest and least developed parishes in Greater London's administrative area, protected largely by green belt policy, which has kept the immediate countryside around the club open despite the M25 running close by to the south. That motorway link puts the course within easy reach of both Essex and Kent, as well as the Dartford Crossing, while the surrounding land is flat arable countryside typical of the area between the Thames estuary and the M25 corridor. The club's 1985 founding places it among the newer additions to Essex's golf clubs rather than the county's older Victorian-era courses.