Ron Smith - Mosspaul Golf Course

On 13^th August, our member Ron Smith gave a talk on his researches into a golf course which once existed at Mosspaul, on the watershed between Hawick and Langholm.

He described how Mosspaul Inn had been a stopping point for the stagecoach run between Edinburgh and Carlisle where horses would be changed over. With the coming of the railway in 1862, that was no longer necessary, and so after a period of decay and abandonment, the project Mosspaul Ltd. was developed by a group of prominent people from Hawick who envisaged a health resort there. This was said to be in response to the increasing popularity of cycling. They offered bowling, cycling, fishing,golf, horse-riding and walking (to the crest of the neighbouring Wisp hill).

Building of the hotel began in March 1900, it was opened in July and the golf course followed in September. The course was described in newspaper reports as 'sporting', surely a euphemism for difficult. It was a six hole course, on either side of the Hawick to Langholm road and crossed dykes and streams as well. Give thought to that first day, when forty golfers competed, going round the course three times to make up the 18 hole test.

The course was promoted by members of Hawick Golf Club, so imagine also the test of getting to the course. The first car drove on a British road in 1895 and by 1900 here were said to be only about 700 in the entire country, so golfers either had to cycle or to go in a horse and trap. The course was mentioned in Nisbet's Golf Yearbook of 1905, but it seems not to have survived a change of ownership of the hotel in 1908.