Prestbury Golf Club Review: An true jewel of the English northwest

Prestbury Golf Club Fact File

• Location: Prestbury, Cheshire (19 miles south of Manchester)
• Year Established: 1920
• Par: 71
• Length (yards): W: 6304 Y: 6106 R: 5512
• Green Fees (summer weekdays): £150
• Website: prestburygolfclub.com

There was a period in which Harry Colt, Alister MacKenzie and Charles Allison were design partners and it was around this time that Prestbury was founded in 1920. There are plans drawn up by both Colt and MacKenzie but it is Colt who gets the credit for one of England's best inland courses.

Located to the south of Manchester near Macclesfield, Prestbury is certainly well inside the Top 100 courses in England and would also be part of a UK Top 200. It is undulating, without being overly hilly, not long by today's standards but it's plenty challenging enough and would be the fairly clear leader in this category. It is also a sand-based course so more playable all year round than many courses in this part of England.

It's a traditional members' club that has hosted Open qualifying and it's fair to say not enough people are aware of quite how good it is with most discerning golfers heading to the nearby coast.

"How Harry Colt produced that golf course on that plot of land just shows the magician he was. It's absolute genius and there's not a weak hole on it. The course itself is under 100 acres, it's an extremely undulating piece of land and the routing is exceptional. Using machines that he would have used 100 years ago, and horse and cart and labourers, it's just incredible," explains Prestbury's course manager Mark Crossley.

Prestbury Golf Club Course Review

The routing here, given how little land is used, is a true work of art. There are three par 5s, all teetering around the 500-yard mark, and none of the quarter of short holes get anywhere close to 200 yards. In between there are a collection of two-shotters which are made up of the slopes, uneven stances and false fronts. It's clever, there are very few steep climbs or big drops and things are fitted in.

The 1st is a par 5 and this forms part of a triple green complex with the 13th and 17th all adjacent to one another. The clever (and essential) part here is that all three approach shots are played from a different direction.

Furthermore one piece of teeing ground houses the tees for the 2nd, 6th, 14th and 18th which makes it possible for holes to move off in different directions.

As you might expect from a Colt layout the par 3s are very strong with the pick of these coming at the penultimate 17th. Here the hole measures 153 yards but you can add 20 yards to that as it's all uphill and the green is a two-tier MacKenzie.

Otherwise the best par 5 which is played from an elevated tee with the clubhouse and cottages in the distance and then you have the decision to take on a plateau green with a false front.

In terms of the par 4s the 16th stands out and this is the only hole on the golf course without a bunker on it. Here a stream runs all the way down the left-hand side before a sloping, smallish putting surface. The 18th also provides a fitting finish with Tom Mackenzie's revamped bunkering moving the hole to a different level.

Interestingly the course changed very little for the first 102 years, then the club commissioned leading architects Mackenzie & Ebert to suggest a bunker improvement programme throughout the course.

In one winter they renovated and reconditioned the bunkers, removing some, replacing others and repositioning the remainder. The project was completed in a 21-week period.

The thinking was to add more strategy to the Prestbury challenge, there is no room to add more yardage so they've added another layer of thinking to the course and improving what they already had.

Historically, like so many other clubs, the bunkers were all different shapes, different levels and more like just holes in the ground and now there's a level of consistency to the whole thing which also means the aesthetics, playability and strategy is all the better for it.

Final Verdict

While this is meant to be a celebration of the best golf that Manchester can offer, there is a fantastic opportunity to tick off and enjoy many of Cheshire’s best courses if you get to Prestbury. From here you have Delamere Forest, Sandiway, Stockport and Wilmslow all within 30 miles. Should you go east you could play Cavendish, another MacKenzie beauty, in Buxton.

Delamere and Prestbury would be the pick of these and, if you only had time to play two of them, then you would head here but  

Cheshire is best known for Royal Liverpool while Wallasey is a course which, already brilliant, has made as much progress as any in recent years. But then you have a collection of absolute top-notch layouts which, whether they are in a certain Top 100 listing or not, are well worth a visit.  

Prestbury is a real feat of course engineering – 500-yard par 5s might look easy on the scorecard but will play very differently and now the club have moved things on with the recent bunker programme. There is often talk of reinstating more of a heathland feel to the course, there are historical pictures where there this is certainly the case, but it's plenty good and different enough to put it on your hit-list for 2026.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

For more information, please visit the club's website here