The Forth Railway Bridge under construction. When completed, this bridge would bring new impetus into Fife from Edinburgh, including easier access to the North side of Queensferry where the Ferryhills golf course was located.

This course was the home of the Dunfermline golf club. This course was the second course of the Dunfermline golf club until 1928 when they moved to Tory. This course was then utilised by a new club called the Ferryhills golf club ( see seperate page ) who were past members of the old club who did not want to remove to Tory ( Mainly because they all lived on the Edinburgh side of the Forth.

The Golf Course on the Ferryhills from Dougie Shaw

(Another forgotten gem that is very much part of the heritage of North Queensferry)

The pathway from the Community Centre around Ferry Loch crossing the railway tunnel by scram-bling up the part of the rock face, continuing on to the water reservoir and down to the Ferryhills road has been a favourite walk for many.

The Heritage Trust is planning to have the path-way named as the ‘Ferryhills Heritage Trail’ with information boards sited at various viewing points explaining the ecological importance of the area and the historical events that took place on or are viewable from the Ferryhills including the golf course.

The views from parts of the pathway are stunning and one of the reasons why Dunfermline Golf Club laid out, on the east facing slope overlooking In-verkeithing Bay and Port Laing, a golf course which opened on the 6th September 1890. De-scribed in a newspaper article at the time as ‘one of Scotland’s finest inland courses’. Initially a nine hole course with a small wooden building acting as the clubhouse tucked away close to then newly built railway cutting which had to be expanded within two years to a full eighteen hole course at a total length of 5021 yards. The opening of the Forth bridge brought with it new membership from Edinburgh as well as from Inverkeithing and Dun-fermline. On May 20th 1897, with membership nearing 400, the original wooden clubhouse was abandoned and possession taken of Cruicks House which was hastily reconstructed to add staff accommodation and a spacious dining room. The wooden clubhouse was eventually sold to Tor-woodlee Golf Club at Galashiels for £70 having been originally exhibited at the International Exhi-bition of Science, Art and Industry in Edinburgh in 1890 and purchased by the Dunfermline Club for £200.

There were many stories and descriptions on how to play the course and the Heritage Trust aim to include some of these on the information board. During WW1 the club extended considerable hos-pitality to the ‘golfers’ of the Grand Fleet from both the many British and American ships stationed at Rosyth and St Margaret’s Bay and the trophies they gave as a mark of their appreciation are still competed for to this day. A fitting tribute, perhaps, to the world event that followed with the largest display ever seen of naval ships from May Island to Rosyth on the 21st November 1918 as part of the Great Pageant leading up to the signing of the document of surrender by the German High Seas Fleet sailing into the Forth estuary and the final closure of WW1 hostilities ten days after the sur-render of all land forces in France.

The Heritage Trust is most grateful to Dunfermline Golf Club for allowing access to and photography of the archive much of which we hope to publish in the near future.