Finding out about The Gazeway 'All-Weather' Miniature Golf Course from a minigolf postcard.
Emily and I enjoy a good mystery and after Emily found a great old minigolf postcard while browsing at the Room at the Top antique shop in Stockport Market's Produce Hall we had another bit of minigolf history to research.
The undated and postally unused card shows Room at The Gazeway 'All-Weather' Miniature Golf Course. A quick online search for this term returned no results!
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| The reverse of the postcard was no help |
Luckily after a bit more digging we found details of the course in a 1930 issue of The Graphic magazine.
The Gazeway 'All-Weather' Miniature Golf Course was created by the company W.H. Gaze in 1930 and was located in Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey. The course was part of an old house on Portsmouth Road which the firm modernised, refurbished and furnished to showcase what the business did.
The company had its own miniature golf section, overseen by Mr H. C. Gaze and the Kingston-on-Thames course was created by a Captain G. B. Mallett - himself responsible for minigolf courses in Vancouver and Los Angeles.
Dating from 1930 the Gazeway 'All-Weather' Miniature Golf Course was one of the earliest artificial layouts in the UK. The first Crazy Golf course in England was created in Skegness in 1926.
At the time miniature golf was experiencing a boom period as the latest craze took hold. Portable and temporary courses could be found popping up in a number of different locations, including on the roof at Selfridges in London.
As is so often the case, history repeats itself and we're currently experiencing a high level of new course openings, as well as refurbishment of old courses and enjoyment of the more than 600 layouts in the UK.
Related blog posts:
- Postcards
- Miniature Golf
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2 comments:
Absolute Corker!
Great find :)
Cheers.
Looks like it would've been a good course to play.
Now, to crack on with building that Time Machine...
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