EIGCA Senior Member Simon Gidman builds the new Ferrybridge Golf Course

Building a new course for SSE Energy posed interesting challenges.

“Where there’s muck there’s brass”. How true that proved to be for the SSE Energy company who have recently built a £300m ‘Waste to Energy’ plant at Ferrybridge in Yorkshire – which, rather fortunately, was built over their smallish 9 hole course , and EIGCA Senior Member Simon Gidman was commissioned to design the new 9 hole course .

When they were building nearby the A1 road a chariot was discovered and the site was thus considered of potential archaeological importance; not that you would have known from its previous use of growing potatoes. It was hard to believe then that one of the planning conditions imposed was that no topsoil could be stripped. What! Planners – don’t you just love them!

However, excavations from the new plant had generated top and subsoil so we were allowed to bring all that material over to the site to form the new course. The course has a multitude of tees to help create variety and alternative lines of play, and because everything is raised above topsoil level, visibility and definition of features is guaranteed.

EIGCA Associate Member Mike Cox provided all the Landscape Planting and Maintenance specifications as well as the Environmental Planning Statement; John Greasley Ltd was awarded the contract which included some 3000m of boundary fencing, the movement of some 55,000 m3 of soils and all planting works.

The course is due to open for play in 2017, when hopefully all the SSE workers will flock back to their own course.

Click here to read more about Simon, and here to read about Mike.