Portumna Golf Club going strong for one hundred years

PORTUMNA Golf Club will mark its centenary year by launching a comprehensive history of the club – penned by well-known local historian John Joe Conwell – at the course’s facilities on Friday evening and according to Chairman of the Centenary Committee John Harte, its publication – along with the myriad of events running throughout the year – has been some time in the planning.

“It is three years in the planning,” outlines Harte. “Interestingly, when you look at the book, 2013 is not really our Centenary but you will have to read it to find out why? 1907, I think, the club initially affiliated according to the GUI but Colonel Coates did not become [the first] captain until 1913 and we had to take that year because golf was only being played here locally in an unstructured way before that.”

Of course, the Golden Jubilee of the club had already taken place back in 1963 so the Centenary Committee’s collective hands were, by and large, tied to 2013. In any event, the extended period gave Conwell, who has written three successful local history books previously, the chance to put together what is an exceptional, top quality offering.

“With this, I was about three years putting it together although when it came to the early section of the book, I would have had a lot of stuff gathered back through the years. The more recent stuff is more difficult. You have to be accurate because it is in living memory. If you make a mistake going back to the early period, I don’t think Colonel Coates will cause you any problems!” he laughs.

According to Conwell, the 228-page book – titled ‘From Little Acorns: A Centenary History of Portumna Golf Club – charts its development since the game was first played on lands rented from a number of tenant farmers in the townsland of Claggernagh on the opposite side of the road to the present club.

Among the prime stakeholders in establishing the golf club were a Mr. Suggett, an engineer working on the bridge in Portumna; Mr. Harrison, a local inspector of the RIC; and Fr. Dignan, a Catholic curate and later Bishop of Clonfert. Colonel Coates, an army doctor at Portumna Workhouse, was the first captain and he held that title for 20 years.

The book subsequently documents the progress the club and its nine-hole course made in the first half of the 20th century right up to the war years and ‘The Emergency’ when Portumna GC – recognising the shortage of household goods, fuel and other items, such as cigarettes due to the harsh economic climate – cleverly offered these same things as prizes in their competitions.

Punctuated by an extensive range of photographs, the book also pays tribute to those who served the club in good stead over the decades, such as a talented golfer named John B. Stronge, who died at a young age in December 1951, and former Club Secretary Michael Bermingham, who was to the fore in arranging the 99-year lease for the club at its present location back in the ‘50s.

Following the Golden Jubilee celebrations in ’63, an extension to the clubhouse was built in ‘66 before a new facility was erected altogether in ’71. It would not be until 1992, however, that the 18-hole course would be opened although the club did secure the freehold title to the property by buying out the lease from Coillte, along with some additional land, the following year.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.