Bosch Hoek Golf Club

Situated in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, Bosch Hoek Golf Club is home to a nine-hole course that has an interesting history, as it formed part of a farm that was among the original Voortrekker claims to be settled in the 1850s. Jan Abraham Naude & Lucas Janssen van Vuuren were granted 5 863 acres of land, & after an official survey, the property was registered in their names. The survey was done by government draughtsman Alfred Watts, whose original 1855 map of the colony of Natal – on which Bosch Hoek Farm appears – is today a rare item of Africana. As farming methods improved in the region and the demand for farmland increased, the property was subdivided & sections sold. A century later and vastly reduced in size, Bosch Hoek was acquired by the legendary industrialist Charles Sydney ‘Punch’ Barlow who transformed it into a model farm, employing the most advanced farming methods and animal husbandry. Although it was something of a hobby for Barlow, it became a highly successful operation. It was in the early 1960s that an interesting connection was made between The River Club, an exclusive private golf club in Johannesburg, and Bosch Hoek. A group of influential businessmen had decided to form their own club in Bryanston, The River Club, and one of these founder members was Barlow. The celebrated course architect Robert Grimsdell was commissioned to design and construct the new club’s layout. A part of the contract Grimsdell undertook to lay out Barlow’s own nine-hole course on his farm in the Natal Midlands. The first shot on Bosch Hoek was played in 1963, thereafter for thirty years the club remained in the private domain of Barlow and his friends. After Barlow died in 1979, his stepson Peter Gallo acquired the farm and continued to maintain the golf course as a private facility. In 1990, Gallo formed the Bosch Hoek Golf Club & Country Estate and sometime later sold the development to the homeowners of the estate – who in turn sold the golf course to South African entrepreneur, Ivan Clark.