Chislehurst

Few courses in Greater London's commuter belt carry quite the historical weight of Chislehurst Golf Club, which traces its roots to 1894 and occupies a stretch of ancient common land on the Kent border. The club has quietly shaped the area's golfing identity for well over a century, drawing members from the prosperous suburban villages that fan out from this corner of southeast London.

A par 66 signals straight away that this is not a course built around big hitting — Chislehurst rewards precision, course management, and the kind of short-game cunning that longer layouts rarely demand. The layout winds through mature woodland, with tree-lined fairways that call for accuracy off the tee and leave little margin for wayward irons. It plays considerably trickier than a glance at the card suggests.

Chislehurst itself is an attractive, historically rich town — home to Camden Place, where Napoleon III spent his final years in exile — and the club fits naturally into that sense of quiet, well-tended English tradition that the area has always carried.