Ben Rhydding Golf Club

Ben Rhydding Golf Club sits on the hillside above Ilkley in West Yorkshire, its nine greens played over 18 holes to a par of 65. The course dates from the 1880s, laid out between 1885 and 1890 as an attraction for the grand Ben Rhydding Hydro — a Victorian hydrotherapy hotel built on the spa-water craze that followed the opening of the White Wells bath house on Ilkley Moor. By 1900 the hotel had been renamed the Ben Rhydding Golf Hotel; it closed during the Second World War and was demolished in 1955, but the golf course survived and the present club was formed at a public meeting in 1947. Many of the houses below the course were later built from the demolished hotel's stone.