Hadley Wood Golf Club

Hadley Wood Golf Club is situated on the former landscape park previously known as Beech Hill Park, which was itself built on land once in the ownership of the Duchy of Lancaster and part of the royal hunting ground of Enfield Chase. When Enfield Chase was enclosed in an Act of 1777, a 152-acre parcel of the land was given by the Crown to Francis Russell, the surveyor who acted for the Duchy during the assignment of allotments of land to the various neighbouring parishes and the leasing of the central 3000-acre area in 24 lots for agricultural development. In 1781 Russell built Beech Hill Park, a 7-bay brick fronted mansion with central Doric columns, to which one-storey pavilion wings were added in the C19th, with good views down Beech Hill. In 1790 the estate was sold to William Franks of Mount Pleasant, Cockfosters. An article in the 'European Magazine' of May 1796 described the landscaped grounds as 'truly picturesque'. In 1800 it was purchased by Archibald Paris who held leases on other lands belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster, totalling some 1338 acres by 1829 and which included Greenwood to the west and Monkey Mead to the north.

The spread of London's suburbia was slow to reach Hadley Wood and even now much of the area retains a rural air. Although the Great Northern Railway had opened its main line in 1850, it did not provide a station at Hadley Wood until 1885. By c.1858 the Beech Hill Park Estate was owned by Charles Jack, who in the early 1880s signed a building lease with the Duchy of Lancaster to develop much of Hadley Wood for housing, which only partially took place.

After his death in 1896, his sons offered the Beech Hill Park estate for sale and it was purchased in 1920 by the Economic Insurance Company. In 1922, after an abortive attempt to break up the estate for building, much of the land was leased to Hadley Park Golf Club and converted into a golf course, largely due to the efforts of Sir Frederick Lewis, later Lord Essendon, and Walter Warwick, both of whom are memorialised within the Club. The golf course was designed by Dr Alister MacKenzie, who was responsible for other well-known courses, among them Augusta, the home of the US Masters, Cypress Point and Royal Melbourne. In 1976 the freehold of the land was purchased by the Members of the Club and it remains a private Members' Club. Fishponds of the former estate remain within the grounds. In addition to the C18th mansion that now serves as the Golf Club House, the C19th Stable Range remains to the north of the mansion, a U-shaped 2-storey building.