Golf club hopes to make major changes to onsite buildings

A Northamptonshire golf club hopes to knock down its hotel and build a series of new buildings, including a new hub, a leisure building and 60 holiday huts.

Farthingstone Hotel and Golf Course has been owned by Fifty Five Hospitality since May 2022. It said it bought it to create “a unique, high quality hospitality venue set amongst a revitalised landscape managed for nature.” Buildings that would be demolished include the current 16-bedroom hotel, a three-bedroom bungalow and other outbuildings. Other amenities including a bar, restaurant and squash courts would also go.

Improvements would include increased biodiversity across the golf course, a solar hub, new staff quarters and a deer-proof enclosure around the perimeter of the whole site. The company said: “Fifty Five Hospitality’s leisure model connects hospitality with the natural environment, allowing guests to reconnect with the natural environment that [the company’s] investment and ongoing revenue will help to restore and maintain.

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“This nature first approach is wholly different to the approach previously taken at Farthingstone, where nature has been subordinate to the leisure use.” It said “membership and trading performance of the golf club was declining pre-pandemic and the operation, facilities and amenities are no longer fit for purpose in an increasingly competitive and shrinking marketplace.”

On its website it said it will “re-nature” about 80 acres of wildflower meadows and woodlands “replanted with native special species to create bio-corridors linking Mantles Heath and Knightly Wood”. It said all new buildings will have a “light touch on the landscape and will remain visually subservient to the natural environment we are creating”.