An ode to the dormy house

Jeremy Ellwood recounts some of his fondest memories from dormy house stays during the course of his golfing travels

- Jeremy Ellwood

There’s something about staying in a golf club dormy house that really does it for me, especially out of season for some strange reason. I’ve been racking my brains to pinpoint what perhaps triggered this enduring appeal, and believe my first ever dormy house experience was at this year’s Open Championship venue, Royal St George’s in Kent, many years ago on a Golf Monthly winter away day.

The dormy rooms there are primarily for the use of members and their guests, as are the ones 50 miles south-west down the coast at Rye, but the vast majority are open to all, including those at Royal Lytham & St Annes, where I have also been fortunate enough to stay on a couple of occasions.

However, when I say ‘vast majority’, we are talking about the vast majority of a relatively small number, for there is still, perhaps slightly surprisingly, only a handful of clubs throughout the country that offer small-scale on-site accommodation, though I believe that figure is slowly growing.

Apart from those two Open Championship venues, I’ve stayed at three more dormy houses over the years – Tenby, Royal Porthcawl and Pyle & Kenfig, all in south Wales – plus the ‘Fairway Lodge’ at Bigbury Golf Club in Devon last year, which is effectively a dormy house in all but name. The Lodge at Cowdray Park in Sussex and the rooms at Gower Golf Club in Wales are a couple of others I’ve stayed at that spring to mind when it comes to small on-site accommodation offerings. Other clubs where I know members of the GM team have stayed in dormy houses include Burnham & Berrow in Somerset, Alnmouth in Northumberland, Formby in Lancashire and Aberdovey and Royal St David’s on the west Wales coast.

Lone ranger