Maidenhead Golf Club in 'advanced talks' for move to Winter Hill site

Maidenhead Golf Club is 'in advanced talks' to move to the site of a popular Cookham-based golf course that is set to close down.

It was announced on Tuesday that Winter Hill Golf Club in Grange Lane will close by the end of April this year.

In a letter to its members, the club said the intention was to sell the clubhouse and course.

It is the end of the era for Winter Hill, which opened in 1976 – a ‘terribly sad’ event which is ‘disappointing’ for its members.

But it could be the beginning of a new era for the 127-year-old Maidenhead Golf Club, which faced a crisis over where it would go amid plans to turn its golf course into 2,000 homes – now approved in the Borough Local Plan.

Winter Hill in the process of negotiation and is ‘in advanced talks’ with MGC as an interested buyer. The site will be closing if the sale does not complete by April.

To progress a sale and release the funds, MGC needs to consult with their 400 members.

Discussions have already begun, and MGC chairman Paul Louden said today (Tuesday) was ‘a positive day’ full of ‘good discussions.’

“I’m hoping to get them all on board,” he said. “That’s our drive for this year. We will listen carefully to our members to make sure we understand their needs.

“Most members would like to stay where they are. We’re disappointed we have to go somewhere else – it will be a hard wrench, us leaving, but we have no other option.”

The two clubs have been talking ‘now and then’ as part of ‘a number of options’ MGC had to consider.

“We tried a lot of things which haven’t been successful,” said Paul.

He does not anticipate the completion of any sale before Winter Hill’s closing date; Paul thinks that contracts will be exchanged (but not fully completed) before then.

“Given [Winter Hill] is going to close, it’s a good chance for us – and it would be our club, not [under] the council freehold. That’s the most beneficial thing,” he said.

“We aim to make it a really top-class golf club for our members. If it’s our club, we can put our time into that.”

As for the question of what will happen to the current Winter Hill members, Paul said a lot of golf clubs have become oversubscribed since COVID and home-working and he was ‘unsure’ what the Winter Hill members will do.

“There may be people who want to come back [when it is under Maidenhead Golf Club] – we would be interested in that, in having talks in the not-too-distant future. But there are no guarantees.

“It’s a sad day when hundreds of people have nowhere to play golf. I don’t know where they are going to play in Maidenhead.

“But for us, personally, [moving to Winter Hill] is a good solution.”

A spokesperson for the John Lewis Partnership, which owns Winter Hill Club, said:

“This isn’t a decision we took lightly, nor is it a reflection of the hard work of our partners – who we continue to support. 

“However, the golf club is no longer used as the employee benefit it once was, with just one in five members now having a link to the partnership.

“With a high level of investment required, for a very small internal audience, we have decided that Winter Hill is no longer the best use of our resources.”