After buying his first set of clubs in Perth in 1502, King James IV spent February 1503 in Edinburgh, and, from his household accounts, we know he purchased golf clubs and balls while there. There is also a note by the Court Treasurer drawing money for the King for a payment in respect of golf with the Earl of Bothwell, which may be a lost wager. It is not known where he played; it could have included Bruntsfield Links.

Bruntsfield Links Click image for larger picture

The King's visit to Edinburgh may have been part of the preparations for his marriage to Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England, which took place at Holyrood Abbey in in August 1503 in Edinburgh. It was because of this marriage that his great-grandson James VI, also a golfer, succeeded Elizabeth I of England one hundred years later.

Council records from 17th Century often mention the rights of golfers to use Bruntsfield Links to play golf over the rights of others who wanted to quarry pits, graze animals or drive roads through the Links. In 1687-88 Thomas Kincaid, a medical student, records golfing in his diary at Leith Links, and probably also played at Bruntsfield.  Thomas Kincaid wrote the world’s first golf training instructions on 26th January 1687. Though the stance he recommends appears a bit odd today, he clearly describes the necessity of a full turn and keeping your shoulders level as well as following through the same distance as you have taken the club back.

In 1718, Alan Ramsay, the poet, published an ‘Elegy on Maggy Johnson who died in Anno 1711’ which told of great number of people who mourned the passing of Maggy Johnson, keeper of a Houff (tavern) at Bruntsfield, with the well known rhyming couplet:-

From at least 1735, the Royal Burgess Golfing Society members were playing on Bruntsfield, but under what name is not certain. In 1761, or thereabouts, the Bruntsfield Association, which became the Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society, began playing apparently created as a splinter group from the Burgess Club.

Golf on the Links is seen clearly in paintings of the time by the military artist Paul Sandy (1746), now at the British Museum, as well later by Slack (1797) and a print by J Ewbank (1798), which hang in Bruntsfield Links GS clubhouse at Davidson’s Mains.

Bruntsfield Links golf course 1818

For many years, the course consisted of five holes. On 4th June 1818 the sixth hole, called the Union Hole was inaugurated with a match between the Burgess and Bruntsfield clubs. For a larger image of the course, click the map.

The first house on this area of the Links, then called the Burgh Muir, was built in 1717, on land feu’d (leased) by the Council in 14th June 1716 to Mr James Brownhill. The building became known as Golfhall or Foxtoun or Foxton and, over the next eighty years it was tenanted to Thomas Comb, a golf club and ball maker; and the Bapties and later Alexander Fraser, who were all publicans. The Burgess club used ‘Golfhall’ as their clubhouse from at least 1773 until 1792. They then took a lease on Captain Rollo’s house, which is called both the ‘Golf Tavern’ and the 'Golf Hotel' in different publications.  It is called the ‘Golf Tavern’ in the Burgess Chronicles and is shown in one later etching as the 'Golf Hotel', as it is in the course map of 1818, shown above. The Burgess club met there until 1874, when they moved to Musselburgh.  

Both Golfhall and the Golf Hotel have been demolished. They were almost certainly on the street now called 'Wrights Houses'.  This name is derived from a mansion called ‘Wryt’s House’, which was on the other side of the present road and which gave rise a village around it called ‘Wright’s Houses’. Number 30/31 Wrights Houses was the clubhouse of the Bruntsfield Links golfing club members from about 1788 until 1890, even after the Bruntsfield club left for Musselburgh in 1839.  The old 'Wryt’s House' was pulled down in 1800 so that James Gillespie could build a Hospital, now used as the Royal Asylum and School for the Blind.

30/31 Wrights Houses Bruntsfield Links Oldest Golf Clubhouse now called Golf Tavern

Details of some of the club-mistresses of 30/31 Wrights Houses are given in Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society. As the building, shown above, still exists, it is therefore the oldest clubhouse still standing. It was probably built in mid/late 18th Century and was remodeled and renamed ‘Ye Olde Golf Tavern’ in late 19th Century, after the Bruntsfield Links club gave up their lease. Click picture above for larger image.

The Bruntsfield Links Short Hole Golf Club, a long time offshoot of the clubs who moved to Musselburgh and elsewhere, keeps golf alive on the Links. The course is a 36 hole pitch and putt course seen in the picture at the top of the page. The Short Hole clubhouse is the green hut shown in the picture. The rule and course layout are shown below. Click images for larger pictures.

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