Description: The City Council took the decision back in 1924 to buy Wollaton Hall and surrounding parkland from the 10th Lord Middleton who had recently inherited the Wollaton Estate from his brother and decided that the hall and grounds were surplus to requirements. He offered them to the City Council for the sum of £200,000. (In 1921 the 9th Lord Middleton had turned down an offer from Jesse Boot who had put in an offer to purchase the hall and land as he was considering it as a possible site for Nottingham's University College.) After the Council's purchase, land at the eastern side of the park was given over for an estate of 'small working, class houses' and from September 1925 onwards, individual plots of land along the northern and southern edges of the park were sold off to private builders. The Council wanted 'quality' housing here and set lower limits to the price of any houses built on these plots. On the Wollaton Road sites it was £700 while in the Adams Hill area of the Derby Road the sum was £3,000. With the sale of this building land the Council recouped the entire cost of their initial purchase; which makes it clear just how generous Lord Middleton had been when he sold the Hall and grounds to the City. The Council also took the opportunity to construct a new highway between Wollaton Road and Derby Road; calling it Middleton Boulevard. The Council soon decided that a portion of the grounds should be turned into a golf course and the remainder should be retained as a public park, with the hall becoming a natural history museum. (Approximately 500 of the original 800 acres of parkland were eventually set aside for the public park and golf course.) Where the idea of establishing a golf course at Wollaton Park came from is not known, but certainly by May 1925 the Estates Committee of the City Council was actively investigating the matter. They sought the advice of Tom Williamson, who suggested the land to the north of Lime Tree Avenue. By August the Committee had authorised Mr. Williamson to go ahead and make all the necessary arrangements for laying out the course. He was to engage such workmen as would be required but the Committee expressed the hope that he would recruit local men from the Nottingham Labour Exchange. The appointment of one outsider was agreed to. This was Williamson's brother Edmund, who was employed as foreman at a salary of £6 a week, a substantial sum for those times. Clearly a gifted player became the first golfing professional at Wollaton once the Club was officially established. Tenders for the construction of a golf pavilion were sought and the Estates Committee entrusted the job to Messrs. Thomas Long & Sons who offered to build it for £9,145. An extra £926 15s was allowed for the laying of a section of road up to the pavilion. A sub-committee of the Estates Committee debated the matter of what fees should be charged. But when their deliberations were presented to the full committee they were thrown out. The sub-committee had made the error of countenancing the playing of golf on a Sunday and the rest of the councillors were adamantly against such an idea. It was finally decided that both sexes could play there on Monday to Friday but that just gentlemen should have the use of the greens on a Saturday. The charges were supposed to be sufficient that all the costs of the construction and future upkeep of the course and pavilion would eventually be met by the golfers. As a result the fees were high. Men had to pay an initial entrance fee of 3 guineas while the ladies were admitted for 2 guineas. The annual subscription was 6 guineas for gentlemen and four for female golfers, while the green fees were set at half a crown, except on a Saturday when the men were expected to part with five shillings. Inevitably those who joined the newly formed golf club almost entirely came from the better off sections of the community. Many civic dignitaries and local businessmen were among the first to sign up. To give the course a rousing send off the Council engaged four top professional golfers to come along to Wollaton on May 5th 1927. Harry Vardon, J.H. Taylor, Ernest Whitcombe and Tom Williamson spent the day playing exhibition rounds of golf much to the delight of the crowds who gathered to watch. (information extracted from the excellent 'Lenton Times' web-site http://www.lentontimes.co.uk/index.htm)