Derbyshire packs a lot of golfing variety into a county best known for its hills. Thirty-three clubs are spread from Burton-on-Trent in the south to Glossop in the north, and the game here ranges from mature estate parkland to windswept moorland above 800 feet. Green fees start from as little as £12, which makes exploring that range an affordable exercise rather than an expensive one.
Parkland with pedigree
Parkland is comfortably the dominant course type, and much of it carries serious design history. Chesterfield Golf Club's back nine was laid out by Harry Colt, who also gave Burton-on-Trent its 150-acre woodland setting in 1894, complete with an Augusta-style 18th and greens quick enough to have hosted Brabazon Trophy qualifying. Kedleston Park, in the grounds of Kedleston Hall, began life as a James Braid design finished off by John Morrison in 1946, one of the first courses built after the Second World War, and its USGA greens have since been reworked by Mackenzie and Ebert for Open Championship Qualifying duty. Braid also drew up Ashbourne Golf Club, Derbyshire's oldest, where holes play out beneath views towards Thorpe Cloud and Dovedale. Elsewhere, Horsley Lodge near Derby has a Roman road crossing the fairways and stone from the old Horsley Castle built into its walls, while Chevin at Duffield mixes parkland with moorland ground and views over five counties from the ridge above the course.
Moorland, limestone links and a MacKenzie original
Head towards the Peak District and the character changes sharply. Matlock Golf Club sits on moorland at 850 feet, Tom Williamson's 1906 design threaded with heather, gorse and the Bentley Brook, which turns up on hole after hole. New Mills, above the town of the same name, adds blind shots and a quarry tee shot on the 12th, with Kinder Scout filling the horizon. Buxton & High Peak, founded in 1887 and Derbyshire's oldest club, is rarer still: an inland links running over free-draining limestone at 1,100 feet, with genuine links character on its 4th, 5th and 6th holes despite being nowhere near the sea. Just down the road, Cavendish Golf Club is the county's real showpiece — a 1925 Alister MacKenzie parkland design widely regarded as his working sketch for Augusta National, still ranked among the UK's top 100 courses and named in Golf.com's list of the best sub-6,000-yard layouts. Bakewell, a nine-holer laid out by George Lowe (designer of Royal Birkdale and Royal Lytham & St Annes), uses 18 tees to wring two rounds' worth of golf from small, fast, deceptively borrowed greens on a Peak District hillside.
Where to base yourself
Buxton, Bakewell and Ashbourne give easy access to the hill courses, while Derby, Chesterfield and Burton-on-Trent sit closer to the parkland cluster. Smaller clubs add local flavour along the way: Alfreton has moved from a 10-hole layout to a full 18 since 2019, Chatsworth plays through the grounds of Chatsworth House itself with no bunkers to speak of, and Glossop & District runs along the edge of the National Park where rolling hills give way to moorland towards the Pennines. Hallowes at Dronfield has produced genuine tour talent in Sam Bairstow, an Open Championship player, which says something about the standard hiding among Derbyshire's less celebrated clubs. Between the Colt and Braid parkland in the lowlands and the MacKenzie course and limestone links up in the hills, there's little need to leave the county to find a proper variety of golf.