MAGAZINE 2024-25
Our archive contains numerous written records detailing the history of the Club, and tracks our pivotal role in the development of the game during the latter half of the 19th century. This included instigating many notable national and international events including the Amateur Championship, International matches, the prototype Walker Cup, and the hosting of 13 Open Championships.
The Club also has a widely admired collection of paintings, medals, trophies, other golfing artefacts, and an extensive library.
This heritage, and how we can showcase it to our members and share with our guests and visitors, must be a fundamental part of what makes Hoylake special. The Club has been a leader in this field for some time, with a long-established Heritage Committee, well served by many dedicated members over the years. It’s a reminder of the pivotal role Clubs can play in preserving the history of the game of golf.
A scoping report in 2018, commissioned by the Heritage Committee, revealed the richness of our archives, but also laid bare some serious issues and challenges going forward. At the time, pieces of the Club’s archive were scattered around the clubhouse, often sharing storage space with furniture. Archive records were pretty basic and neither searchable nor user friendly - there was no system in place to easily locate specific items.
Our heritage is a fundamental part of what makes Hoylake special.
To meet the challenges, in 2021 the Committee drew up an ambitious three year plan with three key objectives at its core:
Club Council supported the plan and agreed to the appointment of a part-time professional Curator Archivist - an important role now filled by Erin Shields - to help us properly catalogue our collection. By happy coincidence, the refurbishment of the clubhouse office space presented the opportunity to create a dedicated storage area and archive room where Erin can be found on Thursdays and Fridays.
During the last three years, the collection has been formally sorted, catalogued, and entered into a dedicated database. Many fascinating old letters have been found, and these, along with the other written archives, have been checked and organised into a logical system that allows the Committee to respond quickly to research enquiries, and highlight areas where the archive remains somewhat lacking. The photography and documentation of key items for record keeping and insurance purposes is on-going, but now largely complete.
When sifting through numerous boxes and clearing out old storage areas, the Heritage Committee came across numerous items of historical interest that had been forgotten over the years.
Good examples include: a rather prickly response from then Club Patron HRH Prince Philip when he was invited to attend the St Andrews dinner in our centenary year of 1969; a lovely silver teapot dating back to the Autumn Meeting of 1911; a rare collection of original photographs given to John Ball in 1907, featuring many of the leading players of the day; and the lease for the links between the Club and landowner Lord Stanley signed in 1893. This was only granted for 30 years as his Lordship reckoned golf at Hoylake - despite being played there since 1869 - was likely to be nothing more than a passing fad.
In early 2023, the Club launched a bespoke version of a collection management software called Epexio. This programme is accessed easily but securely through the Club portal, allowing members to remotely search through our archives. It includes details of objects, books, trophies, and artworks we hold, along with their current physical location. Other sections include key written records, minute books and letters, along with dedicated areas for notable Hoylake people and events. An ever-increasing digital photograph archive is also included.
The Heritage Committee also publishes regular newsletters to update and inform members of new developments, as well as regularly contributing articles to this annual magazine. New display cabinets in the inner hall have allowed the Club to showcase our most important items to best effect, while enabling the flexibility to rotate displays depending on events at the Club.
The collection has been formally sorted, catalogued, and entered into a dedicated database.
It is vital that the Club actively collects objects and memorabilia relating to modern events which, in time, will become historically significant. Examples of recent acquisitions include the driver used by our very own Matthew Jordan in the 2017 Walker Cup. The Club has also been gifted clubs used by Tiger Woods, Rory Mcilroy and Brian Harman after winning their Hoylake Opens. Most current records and correspondence are now already digitised and therefore easily stored, but occasional handwritten letters, programmes and menus for special events are all now retained and kept for posterity. We also purchased a very splendid replica Claret Jug, much in demand by the media before and during the 151st Open last year.
A project to record interviews with long standing members and others with strong links to the club or past major championships at Hoylake has just begun. These eyewitness accounts of important events will enable the club to develop an oral history of Royal Liverpool for present and future members and visitors - and the golfing world in general.
The Heritage Committee is now deciding what our new priorities will be going forward. A brief new Heritage guide will be accompanied by a QR code-based tour of the clubhouse. Our plans include the complete digitisation and transcription of some of our most important historic records. This will mean records like early minute books and scrapbooks of press cuttings from the earliest years of the Club will be easier to find and research. More work will be done on cataloguing both historical and current members of the Club. We hope to find out more about our earlier members and the trophies and medals they left us. There is also a relative lack of archive material regarding important women’s events at Hoylake and this must be addressed. It is very unlikely that we will run out of things to do.
Many thanks to Erin Shields and her predecessors as Club archivists who have worked tirelessly alongside all members of the Heritage Committee. Special mentions to Chris Moore for his work on sifting the written archives and his general encouragement; Sheila McKinnon for her work on organising and cataloguing the library; and Peter Corrigan for his similarly impressive contribution reviewing the Club’s trophy collection.
Many other prestigious Clubs now contact Erin for advice about how to marshall and interpret their archives. She is always happy to advise them, and delighted to help Royal Liverpool members learn how to explore more than 150 years of golf at Hoylake.
