A borough built for parkland golf
Richmond upon Thames packs a surprising amount of golf into its riverside stretch of south-west London. Of the eight clubs recorded here, six are parkland courses, and that tells you most of what you need to know about the golf on offer: tree-lined fairways, well-defined corridors, and courses that reward accuracy over brute force. The towns doing the hosting are Richmond itself, along with Kingston upon Thames, Twickenham and Hampton Hill, so you're rarely more than a short drive from the Thames as it loops through this part of the capital.
Green fees start from around £55, which for golf this close to central London and with this much heritage attached to it, is worth knowing before you assume everything here will be prohibitively expensive.
Royal connections and famous names
The borough's golfing pedigree runs deep. Royal Mid Surrey Golf Club in Richmond was founded in 1892 and designed by JH Taylor, with later greens reconstruction by Martin Ebert. King George V conferred Royal status on the club in 1926, and the course carries a genuinely unusual feature in the King's Observatory, built for George III between 1768 and 1769, which still stands on the layout today. The club's tournament history is substantial too, having hosted the News of the World Matchplay Championship in 1904 and the Amateur Championship of England in 1946. Alongside it, the Royal Mid Surrey Artisans Golf Club shares the same Kew setting, tucked within a bend of the river next to the Royal Botanic Gardens.
JH Taylor's influence extends across the borough. He also designed Strawberry Hill Golf Club in Twickenham, a nine-holer dating from 1900 that has stayed largely true to its original layout. The course record of 59 is shared by Ken Bousfield and JE Fullicks, and in 1968 the club hosted a 36-hole professional tournament that drew six Ryder Cup players from Great Britain and Ireland — a fair achievement for a nine-hole course tucked into an urban setting of grassland, brook and trees.
For sheer setting, little in English golf matches Hampton Court Palace Golf Club in Kingston upon Thames, where the course sits within the grounds of the royal palace itself on Home Park. Richmond Golf Club, meanwhile, was laid out by Tom Dunn amid rural, tree-lined fairways near Richmond Park and Petersham village, and its clubhouse is an early-Georgian mansion dating to 1725 with Palladian architecture — not a bad place to sign your scorecard. The club's course record stands at 62, it runs active ladies and juniors sections, and appointed a female Club Captain in 2022.
Something a little different
Not every club here is only about the golf itself. The Stage Golfing Society, founded in Richmond in 1903 by theatrical impresario George Edwardes, is the second oldest golf society in England and remains a club for people working in entertainment — actors, musicians, comedians, directors and writers among its members. It even puts on an annual live Stage Show production, which is not something you'll find written into the constitution of many golf clubs.
Fulwell Golf Club in Hampton Hill offers a more conventional but still appealing proposition: an 18-hole parkland course on 130 acres on the outskirts of London, founded in 1904, with six sets of tees making it genuinely playable across a wide range of abilities. Between the grand royal history at Kew and Hampton Court, Taylor's design work at Strawberry Hill and Royal Mid Surrey, and Richmond Golf Club's Georgian clubhouse, this small borough offers a concentrated dose of English golf history without needing to leave London at all.