A hole in one

Vivien Devlin visits Archerfield, an exclusive use mansion and golf course in East Lothian

St. Andrews may be well established as Scotland's royal and ancient ‘Home of Golf,' but East Lothian, stretching along the white sandy beach coastline east of Edinburgh, is equally a world class golfing destination.

Here is the famous Muirfield, currently ranked number two in Golf World's Top 100 courses in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Now East Lothian has a new exclusive golf club – Archerfield.

Modelled on the K Club, County Kildare, Ireland (host of the Ryder Cup 2006), the club is designed to create a seriously upmarket, luxury golfing, sporting and leisure experience.

Archerfield Links is located within a 540 acre estate outside the village of Dirleton, on the shore of the Firth of Forth. Two championship 18 hole, par-72 courses have been designed by David J Russell around the natural landscape, pine forests and seashore. The Dirleton is a challenging links course with sweeping fairways, deep bunkers and undulating dunes with views of Dirleton Castle, Berwick Law and the Isle of May.

The Fidra follows beautiful tree-lined fairways, winding its way down to Yellowcraigs beach, overlooking the tiny islands, Bass Rock and Fidra.

As a young boy, the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson spent long summer holidays along the coast at North Berwick – Fidra was the inspiration for his novel, Treasure Island.

Golf has been played on the Archerfield lands for around 500 years with evidence of a 13 hole course on the estate in the 19th century. In 1896 Church minister John ...

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• By : Vivien Devlin
• In : Best of Scotland
• Issue : 29
• Page : 44
• Words : 791