Club opens refurbished clubhouse amid membership surge

Cockermouth Golf Club in Cumbria has unveiled its refurbished clubhouse and revealed it has seen an influx of new members in the last year.

The revamped clubhouse was opened by the town’s new mayor, Alan Smith, on the club’s 125th anniversary.

This year’s captain Dave Skilbeck and ladies captain Elaine Wilson were in attendance to see the clubhouse opened – and used for the first time since last October.

A spokesperson for the club said: “It’s buoyant, it’s bouncing with a lot of new members between 20 and 40 years old.

“A lot of them came from other sports clubs because they couldn’t open.”

The opening of the refurbished clubhouse. Image from Facebook

Presentations were also made to Alan Taylor and Charles Neale for over 50 years’ service to the club. They both joined as junior members and both went on to become club champions.

The club spokesperson added: “We’ve refurbished the clubhouse during lockdown, it was dated with wood panelled walls, we’ve modernised it which has gone down really well.

“I wish we’d done it years ago. A lot of the work was done by members because we have a lot of tradespeople.”

Some of the funding for the work came from anonymous donations.

“The loyalty they’ve shown since last March is unbelievable. A lot of golf clubs were frightened people would stop their direct debits, that became our only source of income,” added the spokesman.

“We didn’t know what support was going to come through the government.”