Bury Golf Club Members Vote to Join Link Golf UK, With £500,000 for a New Members' Bar and Locker Rooms
Bury Golf Club, founded in 1890 in Greater Manchester, has voted to join Link Golf UK's Link Club. The club keeps its name, badge, board and freehold, while Link runs it day to day and commits £500,000 to a new members' bar and locker rooms.
Bury Golf Club members have voted to join Link Golf UK's Link Club, according to The Golf Business (Oct. 30). The town of Bury is in Greater Manchester, in northwest England, north of the city of Manchester. About 97 percent of members backed the move, and Link Golf UK has committed £500,000 of phase one investment toward a new members' bar and new locker rooms.
Bury is the first private members' club to join Link Club, the operator's private members' arm, after a members' presentation and vote that was the first Link Golf UK had put to a full membership. Under the model, the club keeps its name, badge, freehold and elected board, which continues to run competitions, handicaps, team matches and the club calendar. Link Golf UK takes on the day-to-day running of the club and carries the financial risk. All existing staff transfer to the group with their terms protected under the UK's TUPE employment-transfer rules. Members' competition times are ring-fenced, with visitor green fees filling the remaining tee times.
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That £500,000 will create a modern members' bar with an outdoor terrace overlooking the 18th green, alongside new locker rooms, showers and toilets. The announcement gives no schedule for the new bar, terrace or locker rooms and does not name a designer or builder. Further investment is planned for the course and machinery, including a fleet of robotic mowers, a greens turf iron and a new maintenance program, with the club's greenkeeping team carrying out the work with support from group course manager Jared Ellison. In a separate project, Minthis in Cyprus is refitting its clubhouse with a new sports bar in the first half of 2027.
Link Golf UK co-founder and chief executive Andrew Terry said: "I grew up just down the road in Heywood and went to college here in Bury, so I know exactly what this club means to the town and what its reputation once was."
PGA professional Andrew Terry, now its first chief executive, and Joe Jackson, whose background is in finance, founded Link Golf UK in 2019 to save Marland Golf Course in Rochdale from closure after the council said it was losing about £200,000 a year. Link Golf UK's own website describes public golf with "no strict dress codes" and an aim to make golf "affordable, accessible and enjoyable for all," and Bury is its first private members' club. Other operators are adding clubs as well, and Heritage Golf Group recently took on Fox Hollow Golf Club in Florida as its 51st.
Founded in 1890, the club originally played at Redvales, in Bury, according to its official site. In 1920 it commissioned Harry Colt, Alister MacKenzie and Charles Alison to design a new 18-hole course at its current site, and the club credits the design to MacKenzie. Harry Vardon, the six-time Open champion, served as the club's professional, and its main function room is named after him. The clubhouse is Unsworth Hall, an early 19th-century Georgian house once occupied by Bury's first mayor, according to Wikipedia, and the club bought the building and its land in 1920.
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An 1890 club in a Georgian house is handing its day-to-day running to an operator while keeping its land, badge and board, and its first new spending goes into the members' bar and locker rooms.
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