A Half-Century (almost) of Mini-Golf at Coate Water
Ink Heritage Focus - a gem of a leisure attraction has been around for longer than many of us might think
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This is our monthly ‘Heritage focus’ editions which will normally appear on the third Thursday of every month. The first Thursday is ‘Business’, and the second Thursday of the month is ‘Education’, and the final Thursday is ‘Food & Drink’.
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The next free entry Ink Community Talk will be held at 7.30pm on Monday 9 September at The Hop Inn in Devizes Road with Prospect Hospice Chief Executive Jeremy Lune. The talk will be part of The Swindon Shuffle which takes place that week.
The talk entitled ‘Don’t mention the D-words’ will discuss the charity’s vision of a community where death is no longer a taboo and everyone lives and dies well.
By local historian and author Angela Atkinson
I recently had my Surrey-based-7-year-old-granddaughter staying with me.
In an action-packed week, we took in the Roman Baths (in Bath #Obvs) Museum and Art Swindon (a big hit) and the mini-golf at Coate Water. The latter only recently re-opened after being closed since the pandemic. Gosh what an excellent pretext for closing, or rather failing to reopen, leisure and cultural facilities that was.
Now, I’ve been in Swindon over 30 years and recall taking my daughter (mummy of said granddaughter) to the self-same mini-golf. And that got me wondering just how old the facility is. A quick tweet (it’s still Twitter to me – and how do you send an X anyway?) to Swindon’s splendid Local Studies produced the answer.
They have in their files a copy of Thamesdown News (I love browsing old issues of that now sadly extinct publication) that states that, in 1975, Swindon’s mayor of the time performed the opening ceremony of Swindon’s mini-golf. The photo above, from Local Studies, shows it in its shiny 1970s glory. There’s a couple more images of it here on the Local Studies Flickr site.!
Ergo, our beloved, really rather retro mini-golf is 50 next year. And I just love that! I do think we should give it a party to mark the occasion. It did occur to me that it might date from the 1970s – the crazy paving being a big concrete-shaped clue. That particular style of paving was de rigueur dahling in the 1970s. I remember it well.
What’s in a name?
Quite a lot as it turns out. And what it turns out is that the term ‘crazy-golf’ formed a bone of contention for one Swindonian at least. Back in April of 2011, the Swindon Advertiser reported that a council worker felt aggrieved at the eponymous golf facility now being referred to as ‘crazy’ rather than ‘mini’ golf. His sentiment being, that one might consider the term offensive to those suffering from mental health issues. He told the Adver ‘I was always happy that the council always called its small course ‘mini golf’.