SILKSTONE Golf Club is marking its 125th anniversary this year and a replay of the club’s first ever match brought prompted members to find out a little more about the club’s origins.

The first match marking the establishment of the club in 1893 had been played between the club and a team of officers of the Carabiniers and Royal Scots who were stationed nearby at the time.

Keith Geal, captain of the club in 2015, contacted the army to see if the successors were open to a ‘rematch’ and earlier this month a team from the The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards travelled from Scotland to take up the challenge.

The soldiers won the match in 1893, but the Silkstone lot levelled the score.

Keith said it was wonderful to meet the soldiers, who brought with them a little more detail about how that first match came about.

“They explained why the soldiers ended up down here in the first place back in 1893,” said Keith, 60, of Towngate, Silkstone, and the explanation meant they would not have been welcome by the majority of working men at the time.

“It’s been part of our golf club’s folklore for generations, but we’ve always thought it was strange a Scottish regiment would be down here.

“It turns out they were actually stationed in Hull at the time. But there were some issues with the local miners, and the authorities had called them in to help sort it out.”

The club had originally been known as Barnsley Golf Club when it was founded at Dayhouse Farm, Huddersfield Road. The first match was reported in the Barnsley Chronicle in 1893.

Former Chronicle editor Don Booker, a member at the club, has researched the history of the club, which moved to Silkstone in 1905, and produced a book all about it.

An 18-hole course with a length of 5,330 yards was planned by H Fulford, of Moortown Golf Club, Leeds. The first nine holes were opened in May 1905 at a cost of £600 - a figure equivalent to about £70,000 today after accounting for inflation.

But the First World War delayed the creation of the second nine holes and these were not brought into use until 1917.

The first clubhouse was part of the farm building and remained in use until 1927, when a new clubhouse was donated by Ald R J Soper, Barnsley MP.

The club’s early records make little mention of the ladies section, but while some golf clubs’ reluctance to accept lady members has often been a contentious issue, Silkstone accepted ladies as members as far back as 1905.

While initially they were only ‘non-playing’ members, they went on to be allowed to play from ladies tees, and were allowed to play from the men’s tees in inter-club competitions.

The ladies section of the club went on to thrive.

In 1943 part of the course was taken over for opencast mining which produced 100,000 tons of coal and it was not until 1956 that the course was finally restored.

When the lease was terminated in 1968, the club purchased the land for £10,000 and Barnsley and District Club became Silkstone Golf Club.

The wooden structure of that original 1927 building still forms the interior of the present premises.