Towneley Golf Club

Towneley Golf Club was established in 1932 and plays over eighteen holes at Burnley, in the Lancashire Pennines. The course takes its name from Towneley Park, the historic estate on Burnley's eastern side that includes Towneley Hall, and the club's grounds sit within that same parkland setting on the edge of the town. Burnley grew rapidly during the nineteenth century as one of Lancashire's cotton-weaving towns, and the hills that once powered its mills still rise close around it, giving courses in the area a setting of steep valley sides and open moorland beyond the built-up centre. A course founded in 1932 reflects the wave of municipal and parkland golf that spread across northern England's industrial towns between the wars, often, as here, using land attached to a former private estate. Towneley's position within the park keeps it close to Burnley town centre while still offering the more open, wooded ground typical of the Towneley estate's original grounds.