People living near the oldest nine-hole links course in England have attended a meeting to see what they can do to prevent the course being lost to the elements.
This comes as a new report states that many golf courses along the east coast of England are facing the very real threat of disappearing beneath rising tides and coastal erosion.
Alnmouth Village Links Golf Club in a Northumberland seaside village was established in 1869 and since 2013 there have been five major storm events that have caused damage. Earlier this year part of the fifth hole washed away during the fifth event; Storm Isha.
More than 60 local residents have now attended a meeting of the North Northumberland Local Area Committee held at the golf club to discuss the problem. Ian Garrett, a member of a subcommittee set up by the club to try and tackle the issue, said the problem affected more than just the golf course.
He said: “This is an important community issue. Earlier this year a severe storm led to coastal erosion at the fifth green of this historic golf club. We want to share information about what we have done and what we have found.
“We felt compelled to share it with the younger generation who want to build lives here, because ultimately it will impact them. We wish to develop a short-term plan which will buy time in terms of dealing with coastal erosion before creating a medium and longer term plan that will protect the wider community and the golf course, because the impacts are great.
“It will require a collaborative approach at all levels – community, county and nationally.”
Professor Stephen Lockley of the Alnmouth Shoreline Defenders group explained that the committee had made efforts to try and combat the problem, but this had been complicated by numerous landowners as well as government agencies with different restrictions including Natural England and the Northumberland Coast National Landscape.
He added: “The tidal surge took away a relatively small bit of the golf course and the common. We set about trying to fix it, but I had no idea how complicated Alnmouth really was – it can’t be more difficult to do anything anywhere.
“Our environment is vulnerable. We have to look after it, it has to be cared for. Storms and tidal surges have gotten more and more frequent – where we might have got one a year, we now get three or four every winter.
“These things are random – we don’t know when they’re going to happen. What we have to be able to do is respond to them in a planned way. If this is going to happen three or four times a year, we have to have a way of dealing with it.”
The committee, alongside the village’s burgage holders and supported by Northumberland Estates, have restored two ‘groynes’ on the beach to prevent erosion. These wooden structures are built to limit the movement of sediment and interrupt water flow, limiting the speed of erosion.
Nick Watson, Northumberland County Council’s flood and coastal erosion risk management engineer, said a report had been commissioned by the council to look at possible solutions to the problem in Alnmouth. The report would look at what the community wanted as well as what would be allowed by regulators.
He said: “There’s nothing right now that is a very obvious action. We’re looking in a lot more detail.”
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