The village won back its hill from the Duke. The grass won it back from the village.
Price Paid: £15 (9 holes), paid at the village Spar after the round
Current Price (2026): £20 day ticket; no 9-hole rate listed
Value Rating: 1/5 at £15 / 1/5 at £20
Moly’s Score: 50 gross, 11 Stableford points (9 holes)
Two hundred blogs, and the milestone falls on a 1/5 for value. Fran and I drove over the hill from Langholm (Blog 199) the same afternoon. Langholm had been everything a rural nine-holer should be: a tenner in the honesty box, the toilet code left with the scorecards, small true greens. Newcastleton was chalk to Langholm’s cheese.
The clubhouse was locked. There was no box and no notice with bank details. I’ve paid at a good many honesty boxes around Scotland, and the trend is towards a sign with a sort code so you can pay from your phone on the first tee. Newcastleton was the first to send me to a shop. A notice behind the glass listed the Spar, a café and the caravan park. I played first and then paid afterwards. The club website said £12.50; the Spar said £15. To be fair to the Spar, the club’s own board agreed with it. It was the website that was out of date.
There’s a bigger story on this hill. Newcastleton is a planned village, laid out in 1793 by the third Duke of Buccleuch for hand-loom weavers. In 2020 the community trust bought 750 acres of Holm Hill, the hill the course sits on, back from the Buccleuch estate. Among the plans was a new clubhouse for the golf club. When we played, three years later, the blue tin hut was still there, and it looked as though nobody had been round with a mower for a fortnight.
That’s a shame, because underneath there is a proper course. It’s a substantial layout climbing Holm Hill, very difficult first time round, with a 452-yard par-4 9th. There’s not a bunker on it, and like Langholm it doesn’t need one; the hill does the work. But the greens were not really greens. The 1st was fairway length, with a ragged cup sitting proud and five fresh droppings a foot from the hole. Take my score of 50 with a pinch of salt.
I did make a 2 at the 106-yard 2nd, “Wee Hill”, played uphill to a flag that barely shows over the crest. The slate tee sign announces it as the 11th? The tee signs are half lost to lichen and bracken. On the 3rd stands what looks like a retired bus shelter, with a sapling growing through the bench.
The club says the course is managed and maintained by its members, and calls its clubhouse “such as it is”. Both Fran and I were our Club Captains and we know what volunteers give. But if the volunteers can’t keep the course in a state to charge for, the honest answer is to keep it members only rather than take £15 (now £20) from visitors. That’s half as much again as Langholm, for a course in a far worse state. There was also no toilet, which is fine for me but not for Fran, who wisely walked rather than played.
The club now lists bank transfer as a way to pay, so one complaint has been answered. The rest is down to the mower. Value is 1/5 at £15 and 1/5 at today’s £20 day ticket. Should I have played? Probably not. But when you’ve driven all the way there…
Facts:
Course Type: Hillside parkland
Par: 34 (7 par 4s, 2 par 3s); 69 over 18 from second-nine tees
Distance: 2,654 yards, white tees (9 holes)
Course Rating / Slope: 67.5 / 111 (18 holes)
Course Quality: 1/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 50 (9 holes), 11 Stableford points
