Northumberland does golf in two very different registers. Along its coast, from Berwick-upon-Tweed down through Alnmouth and Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, you get proper links turf and sea air. Inland, around Hexham, Morpeth and the Tyne Valley, the game settles into gentler parkland, often laid out across old estate ground or, in one memorable case, former colliery land. With 30 clubs across the county and green fees starting from £35, there's little financial reason not to sample both.
The coastal clubs carry real weight. Alnmouth Golf Club, founded in 1869, is the fourth oldest club in England, its parkland-on-turf layout sitting within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with sea views throughout. Just along the same stretch, Alnmouth Village Golf Club plays a genuinely historic nine-hole links designed by Mungo Park, winner of the 1874 Open Championship — reckoned to be the oldest nine-hole links in the country, and a course members happily play twice round for a full eighteen. Further north at Berwick-upon-Tweed, Goswick Links has been shaped over the years by Tom Dunn, Willie Park Jr, James Braid, Frank Pennink and Tom Mackenzie, and it earns its reputation as a regional Open qualifying venue — it has hosted qualifying eight times, most recently in 2024, and sits among the top 100 links courses in Great Britain and Ireland. A short drive away, Magdalene Fields claims the title of England's most northerly course, with panoramic views to Holy Island and Scotland and a par-3 eighth played straight over a cove.
Dunstanburgh Castle Golf Club, at Embleton Bay near Alnwick, is the standout for setting alone: an eighteen-hole James Braid links overlooked by the fourteenth-century castle ruin, on free-draining ground that keeps it playable through the winter. Down the coast at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, the 1884 links club has its own footnote in Open history — David 'Deacon' Brown, the 1886 Champion, served as club professional there around 1888. Seahouses, meanwhile, is classed as coastal rather than pure links, with a signature tenth hole played as a par 3 over water near the beach and cliffs.
Parkland Inland
Fifteen of the county's thirty clubs are parkland, and they range widely in character. Hexham Golf Club sits on 70 acres of the Spital estate, its Grade I listed Spital House clubhouse standing on ground with a story going back to a medieval hospice founded in 1114; the current layout is by C K Cotton, though it was Harry Vardon who designed the original course there in 1907. Vardon also laid out Morpeth Golf Club in 1906, across 130 undulating acres, and the clubhouse there was refurbished in 2016. At Bedlingtonshire, Dutch architect Frank Pennink — who also worked on Royal Lytham, Royal Liverpool and Royal St George's — produced a course whose thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth holes, known simply as