Tynedale Golf Club left with repair bill after raiders strike

Sep 7 2010 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal

FORTUNE-HUNTERS digging for buried Victorian treasure have left a North East golf club with expensive repairs after burrowing deep into the course fairway.

Officials at Tynedale Golf Club at Hexham discovered three 4ft deep holes on the sixth fairway of the riverside course.

It is believed a gang of raiders was searching for valuable bottles dumped there when the land was used as Hexham tip as far back as the 1890s.

Now the golf club, facing expensive repairs, has had enough, and plans to introduce private security patrols after a series of similar raids going back several years.

Old and rare bottles can fetch large sums of money and ‘bottle diggers’ around the country have pinpointed sites where old bottles are believed to be buried.

“And unfortunately for us, one of those sites seems to be our sixth fairway,” said Tynedale Golf Club chairman Brendan Murphy after surveying the damage yesterday.

“The problem is that before the golf club built on the land and opened in 1908, this land was the tip for Hexham and lots of bottles were dumped there.

“The bottles were never removed. The course was built over the top of it and therefore these people believe the bottles are still there.

“For me, why on earth anyone would want antiquated bottles I don’t know. But apparently some of them are quite valuable, and that’s what they come looking for. It’s a nightmare for us, though. Not only had we just re-seeded that part of the course and not only do we now have the expense of repairing it, but we could also lose members who don’t want to play on a course where this sort of thing is happening.”