Glasgow earmarks Linn Park land for housing as volunteers revive it

Site CfS240538 in Glasgow’s new City Development Plan covers 2.56 hectares off Simshill Road on the city’s south side. The environmental report published with the plan describes it as part of the former Linn Park Golf Course and gives its allocated use as housing. On the same course this year, three men who learned the game there as boys have been mowing tees and greens with their own equipment so that people can play it again.

The plan is out for public comment until 18 November.

A busy muni, closed in 2020

Cathcart Castle Golf Club laid out a course around the ruins of the castle in 1899. When Glasgow Corporation bought the land in the 1920s the club moved to a new course near Clarkston, and Linn Park became a public course in 1924, according to Golf’s Missing Links.

More than 6,000 official rounds were recorded there in 2018, which made it one of the most popular municipal courses in Scotland, according to bunkered. In February 2020 it was one of five courses whose funding Glasgow City Council voted to withdraw; the pandemic shut it a month later, and it never reopened. The closures were part of 2020 budget cuts that had to find £50m of savings, the council told GlasgowWorld. Linn Park’s closure left the south side of Scotland’s largest city with no public golf at all, bunkered noted.

“Linn Park Golf Course and clubhouse has not been operational since the start of the pandemic and we have no plans to reopen the facility,” a Glasgow Life spokesperson told bunkered in April.

Castlemilk’s volunteer greenkeepers

Steven McKinney, 47, Eddie Montgomery, 40, and Bob Storrie grew up in Castlemilk, the estate on the other side of the course’s fence, and all three were members at Linn Park. McKinney studied greenkeeping at Langside College. They began by cutting the sixth green and the old fifth and 18th greens so they had somewhere to practise, according to the Scottish Daily Express.

“We started doing it for selfish reasons,” McKinney told bunkered. “We just wanted somewhere to have a hit.”

Storrie told bunkered that older members were left with nowhere they could afford to play, and that some could not drive across the city to other courses because their old cars do not meet Glasgow’s Low Emission Zone rules. McKinney told the Express that £1,000 for a family membership elsewhere was beyond many households nearby.

Their GoFundMe page went up on 31 March with a target of £1,300 for equipment. It now stands at £5,175 from 180 donations, and any money left over is promised to local food banks. Chris McLaughlin of CM Landscaping cut fairways at his own expense, Golfshake reported.

When Douglas Dickie of the Express played the course in May, about 15 holes had been cut out and nine were playable; by the end of his round the 17th and 18th were in play too. Some flagsticks had been stolen. The 12th, the old course’s only par five, was not yet in play, and the steep ninth and 10th will not fully return: the group plans two par threes in their place. In April McKinney told bunkered the greens needed top-dressing, scarifying and hollow-coring; the Express reported that the work is planned for the winter.

“It’s not Augusta, but it’s ours,” he told the Express.

Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Life told GlasgowWorld in May that they cannot support or endorse anyone playing golf on the former course, citing health and safety and insurance.

What the plan marks out

The environmental report lists four pieces of the old course. The former clubhouse (0.26 hectares) and its car park (0.38 hectares) are identified as brownfield development opportunities. The 2.56-hectare Simshill Road site is allocated for housing, and the report scores its effect on the local landscape as significantly negative. A larger parcel of 25.44 hectares, described as the golf course itself, is marked for retention in the green belt, with a note that it is a council-owned site for disposal.

In May, GlasgowWorld reported that the draft plan proposed around 150 homes on part of the course, scheduled for years seven to ten of the ten-year plan. John Carson, the Labour councillor for Linn ward, told the paper it was frustrating to see housing pursued on the site while local people were trying to reopen it, and urged residents to respond to the consultation.

The volunteers are setting up a community trust, GlasgowWorld reported, and the Express said their aim is a community asset transfer of the course from Glasgow Life, which would open up funding they cannot apply for now. In April 2021, Glasgow Life recorded that interest had been expressed in running Linn Park under a new model through its People Make Glasgow Communities programme.

Representations on the plan can be made through the council’s online survey or by post to the City Development Plan Team, 231 George Street, Glasgow G1 1RX, until 18 November. The council will then publish a report of the changes it proposes, and any objections it does not resolve go to an examination by independent reporters from the Scottish Government.

Sources

• Glasgow City Council: CDP2 Strategic Environmental Assessment, Stage 1 development proposals assessment
• Glasgow City Council: current consultations, City Development Plan 2
• Glasgow View: Representation period for Glasgow’s new Development Plan begins
• bunkered: Golfers bid to re-open beloved Scottish course
• Scottish Daily Express: I played the abandoned Glasgow golf course undergoing an unlikely resurrection
• GlasgowWorld: Linn Park golf course earmarked for new homes in Glasgow’s draft development plan
• Golfshake: How volunteers are trying to save one of Glasgow’s lost municipal golf courses
• GoFundMe: Linn Park Golf Club
• Golf’s Missing Links: Cathcart Castle Golf Club
• Glasgow Life: venues not yet scheduled for re-opening, April 2021