Alnmouth Village Golf Club plans to tackle the erosion that threatens the oldest nine hole links course in England

The club, founded in 1869, is the oldest nine-hole links course in England and is under threat from erosion caused by high tides from storms.

A portion of the fifth green, that was once held up by the dunes, was found on the beach after the sand supporting it crumbled away.

Although it hasn’t affected the course, the club are concerned that more of the green will be lost over time, so they have came up with a solution they hope will prevent damage.

Ian Simpson, club secretary, said: “It hasn’t taken away any of the course yet and we can still play all nine holes. It has exposed some of the land very close to the 5th green and if we don’t do something about it then it will take away our fifth green this year.

“Over the last 20 years, a lot of that coastline (north east England) has been taken away. We were obviously aware that we were close to the sea but not to the extent that we were in danger. A lot of that coastline is protected by big concrete blocks and, as it happens, the part that has been taken away, towards our fifth green, there were no blocks there.”

The tides exposed scrap concrete and World War Two coastal defence cement blocks that haven’t been visible to locals for some time. After researching different solutions, Ian and the club opted to pay for approximately 100m of the land to be filled with locally quarried armoured rock.

“If you can picture the big harbours, they have big rocks around them, and that is the sort of thing that we are looking at,” Ian explained. “We had a company come in to give us a quote and we imagine that it will be in the tens of thousands.

“There is the process of getting it onto the beach, transportation and everything else that goes with it. They reckon it’s about a two-week job.”

Unfortunately for the club, they need to raise their own funds as it occupies private land. Despite having support from Northumberland county councillors, they can’t dip into the allocated £25 million sea defence fund.

“It has to come from our club funds,” he said. “Whatever we have, we will have to use. We will try and look for funding elsewhere but I don’t know if it will be available.”

There is a plan B, but it comes with its own complications, as Ian explained: “We have not looked at changing the design per se, but if we were to lose that green then we would look at putting a green in somewhere else at great expense. That would be our only option.

“We are fairly tied that the land we have got is under a licence from the burgage holders, who own various houses in the village. They have a lease from the Duke of Northumberland to maintain the common, which is where we play golf on.

“It is a complicated situation, but we would have to get more land off them to move our fifth green in to.”