Norfolk Country Club

Norfolk Country Club is a small, traditional summer club in the hill village of Norfolk, Connecticut. Its golf course is a nine-hole A.W. Tillinghast design, the architect behind Winged Foot and Baltusrol, laid out over rolling, undulating ground that was once sheep pasture on the old Curtiss farm. The holes are short but the club calls them challenging, with ground contours doing much of the defending.

The club was set up in 1912 by summer residents, many of them New Yorkers who came to Norfolk for its clean air, lakes and music. Its first clubhouse was the old town gymnasium. In 1917 members bought land next to the Norfolk Downs course and built the present clubhouse, designed by architect and member Alfredo Taylor. After buying more land, they hired Tillinghast, and their own course opened on July 1, 1928.

Golf is one part of a busy social calendar. The club has a pro shop with lessons and clinics, tennis courts with their own professional and round-robin evenings, a clubhouse restaurant serving lunch and dinner several days a week, and events through the summer such as a Wednesday Night Scramble.

Members first played on the Norfolk Downs, a town course donated in 1897 by local benefactor Isabella Eldridge. She banned golf on Sundays, which frustrated the weekend members; after her death in 1919, the club bought her neighbouring land to build its own nine holes. In 1954 members voted by a large margin to install the club’s first bar, ending the old habit of bringing your own bottles.